A restorer works on the head of a mechanical doll that manually moves a fan that once kept the imperial family cool on the sprawling compound of the Forbidden City, also known as the Palace Museum in Beijing, in February 2025.
About 150 workers on the team fuse scientific analysis and traditional techniques to clean, patch up and otherwise revive the more than 1.8 million relics in the museum's collection.
They include scroll paintings, calligraphy, bronzes, ceramics — and, somewhat unexpectedly, ornate antique clocks that were gifted to emperors by early European visitors.
Restorer Kang Baoqiang speaks near a state-of-the-art X-ray diffraction machine analyzing a glazed roof tile from the Forbidden City in a lab on the sprawling compound of the imperial palace, which is today a museum that attracts tourists from all over the world.
A fragment of the glazed roof tile is analyzed in the X-ray diffraction machine that produces images, which are then projected onto computer screens.
The fragment being examined has a dark area on its surface that restorers want to understand. Their objective is to better preserve the artifacts at the sprawling imperial palace, the former home of China's emperors and its seat of power for hundreds of years.
"We want to learn what the black material is," said Kang. "Whether it's atmospheric sediment or the result of substantial change from within."
Clock restorer Qi Haonan talks about the antique clocks near a mechanical doll that manually moves a fan that once kept the imperial family cool on the sprawling compound of the Forbidden City.
Restorer Wang Nan (R) patch up holes on a panel of patterned green silk with the Chinese character for "longevity" sewn into it, adding color in a process called "inpainting," at a workshop on the sprawling compound of the Forbidden City.
The piece is believed to have been a birthday gift to Empress Dowager Cixi, the power behind the throne in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Much of the work is laborious and monotonous — and takes months to complete.
"I don't have the big dreams of protecting traditional cultural heritage that people talk about," said Wang Nan, one of the restorers. "I simply enjoy the sense of achievement when an antique piece is fixed."
She works on an antique painting. Now a major tourist site in the heart of Beijing, the Forbidden City is the name that was given to the sprawling compound by foreigners in imperial times because entry was forbidden to most outsiders. It is formally known as the Palace Museum.
An elaborate antique clock is displayed on the sprawling compound of the Forbidden City.
Qu Feng, head of the museum's Conservation Department, said restoration techniques have also evolved though the old ways remain the foundation of the work.
When we preserve an antique piece, we "protect the cultural values it carries," Qu said. "And that is our ultimate goal."
