Beijing’s Forbidden City gets its name from the fact that it was once off limits to anyone who did not have the permission to enter from the Chinese emperor. It’s also known as the gu gong, or former palace, a firm reminder that such elitism is a thing of the past, never mind that the Communist Party’s leadership compound of Zhongnanhai, which lies just to the west of the former imperial palace, is the same sort of restricted zone that the Forbidden City once was.
Now the Forbidden City is open to anyone who buys a $9 ticket to the Palace Museum. But in a post on his microblog last week, Chinese state television host Rui Chenggang alleged that plans were afoot for a private club for wealthy elites in the Forbidden City. The club, with a membership fee of $150,000, was to be established in the Forbidden City’s Jianfu Palace, built in the 18th century for the Qianlong Emperor and ravaged by fire in 1924. The structure was rebuilt starting in 1999 with money from the China Heritage Fund, a nonprofit organization founded by Hong Kong businessman Ronnie Chan.
For a country where socialist ideals of equality have given way to a yawning wealth gap, the story of a private club for the super-rich opening in such a politically and historically important place inspired public indignation. Rui also wrote that a foreign tour guide boasted of arranging a dinner for an American billionaire in a closed hall of the Forbidden City. While a far cry from the wholesale theft of China’s national treasures by foreign powers in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the accusation that China’s heritage could be rented by the highest bidder provoked sharp resentment. Last week Beijing’s Palace Museum denied Rui’s allegations of plans for a private club in the Forbidden City. On Monday, after a document that appeared to be an application form for the club circulated online, the museum backed off its denial, stating that a club had been proposed by the Beijing Forbidden City Cultural Development Company, a museum subsidiary. The club was planned without museum leaders’ approval, the museum said in a statement Monday, adding that “at present this improper activity has thoroughly ceased.”
That acknowledgment is the latest in a string of embarrassments for the Forbidden City. On May 8 a visitor knocked a hole in a wall and made off with $1.5 million worth of early 20th century purses and cosmetics containers on loan from Hong Kong. Police later caught a suspect, but the theft prompted concerns about security at the country’s most high profile museum. And also on Monday the museum apologized for a typo on a banner presented to Beijing police. The mistake meant the banner, which was meant to praise the police for safeguarding the motherland, instead accused them of causing the country to “shake.” These days, that’s an accusation more suited to the museum itself.