China Telecom Museum

　　   The China Telecom Museum is located on the northeast side of Xuezhi Intersection in Haidian District, Beijing, within the Zhongguancun Science and Technology Development Zone, an area in Haidian that is home to a large number of scientific and cultural institutions. With an exhibition area of over 7,000 square meters, the museum houses a collection of more than 17,000 cultural relics and features four exhibition halls. During the era of the former Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, under the direction of the Ministry’s Postal and Telecommunications Historical Center, the internal exhibits were completed in August 1999, and the China Telecom Museum officially opened to the public in October 2001. The China Telecom Museum strives to be a comprehensive window showcasing China’s communication history and culture as well as the achievements in communication development; a boutique gallery featuring cutting-edge technologies in future communications; a second classroom for popular science education in communication technology among young people; a bridge connecting communication enterprises with the general audience and users; a link between communication operators and manufacturers; and a base for technological and cultural exchanges within the international communication industry. The China Telecom Museum greets visitors from all over with a brand-new spirit. The museum does not only cover telecommunications in the modern sense (i.e., telephones), but also explores the broader concept of information transmission—from mail delivery, parcel postage, telegraph, telephone, mobile communication, satellite communication, to even the principles behind video conferencing. The second and third floors of the museum are exhibition areas. The second floor focuses mainly on historical introductions, divided into three exhibition halls for ancient, modern, and contemporary periods, while the third floor primarily introduces the telecommunications industry. The second-floor exhibition halls contain a wealth of information, covering everything from the use of fire beacons to transmit messages during the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties to modern satellite communication.

　　   The ancient exhibition hall mainly consists of text and image displays, while the modern history exhibition hall contains many physical artifacts—such as postmarks, uniforms worn by postal workers during the Taiping Rebellion, a large number of preserved letters, a 1:1 scale model of a Qing Dynasty post office, wax figures of post office staff, and more. The contemporary exhibition hall introduces the changes in the postal industry after the liberation. After visiting, you’ll learn that the separation of postal and telecommunications services actually occurred multiple times. You can also see the old rotary dial phones and switchboards that were used in childhood. On the third floor, I mainly learned how mail is sorted—it turns out sorting centers mainly rely on machines recognizing postal codes to sort mail, though I’m not sure how the recognition program of those large machines works. Other content on the third floor might also be found in science museums, such as the principles of telephones, introductions to video conferencing, displays of switches, explanations of cellular networks, and demonstrations of video-on-demand systems.

　　   The China Telecom Museum houses a collection of over a thousand communication-related artifacts. Among them, treasures rarely seen by the public include a late Qing Dynasty dragon-patterned telephone, a Wheatstone gravity telegraph, and a common battery manual switchboard. These exhibits, along with landscapes, dioramas, models, paintings, and sculptures, complement each other to present a complete display of the development of communication in China. Here, you can also see some of the most advanced communication technologies and products available today, with each communication system accompanied by multimedia touch screens providing relevant knowledge content. Visitors can even try operating communication equipment themselves to experience the charm of modern communication technology firsthand.

　　   Source: Beijing Municipal Commission of Tourism Development