A museum in China’s western Shanxi Province notified the public this week that it would be forced to close temporarily—as the museum’s curator had been severely assaulted and left in a coma by a Chinese Communist Party district chief. The incident has sparked heated discussions on Chinese social media about the abject state of China’s justice system—and the people’s lack of recourse.
The Luliang North Wudang Ancient Weapons Museum in Shanxi Province posted an unusual notice on its official account on the Chinese social media platform Weibo on May 8. The notice announced the temporary closure of a sister museum—but for a shocking reason.
“Curator Gao Yufeng was assaulted by the district chief Zhang Haiwen when he visited the Lishi District government for business,” the notice read.
“The curator was pushed down and injured, and was sent to the emergency department of Luliang City People’s Hospital by ambulance. His current state is very unstable, sometimes falling into a coma. It is really impossible to open the museum normally to receive visitors under the circumstances. Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause!”
According to local newspaper Luliang Daily, 20-year-old Gao Yufeng made his first discovery of ancient weapons in the area in 1980, and started collecting them.
In 2014, Gao founded the Luliang North Wudang Ancient Weapons Museum, which is the first private museum and the only ancient weapons museum in Luliang City. In 2016, he opened the Luliang Mountain Revolutionary Museum.
According to the Chinese search engine Baidu, Shanxi’s Luliang Mountain Revolutionary Museum is the first privately owned museum in Luliang with the “red [communist] revolution” as its theme.
Drawing Public Attention
The news, however, sparked heated discussions on Chinese social media.“This trick is really amazing. Thinking rationally, how does the museum’s receiving visitors have anything to do with the curator being beaten?” one commentator asked.
“Even if a curator is dead, the museum would still open as usual. This is to use the closure notice to let the world know: our curator was beaten unconscious, and seriously injured. The museum won’t open until the authorities handle it properly.
“It’s killing multiple birds with one stone,” the message reads. “The notice has hidden messages—it’s great!”
Another wrote: ”This is about a curator being knocked down by the head of the district. If it’s ordinary people who were beaten up [by officials], they would have no place to post an official notice to the public, and could only suffer it in silence.”
“Why didn’t the curator of the museum complain through legal channels that he was beaten?” another netizen asked. “If the curator of the museum can’t speak out through legal channels, but needs to use the power of social media as well, it is even more impossible for ordinary people to use legal channels to speak out about the injustice they suffer!”
Another post read: “This shows that the normal channels [in China] can no longer solve problems. There is no other way but to fight each other to the death—nobody will have peace!”
Some netizens said they were also worried about the future of private museums: “This is a denouncement—frustrated, speechless, helpless ... I don’t know if this museum will be able to reopen in the future. Any governmental agency, such as fire protection, safety supervision, urban management, street office, or even property management, can shut it down anytime.”
