Dull, dusty exhibits? Not here

Jinsha Site Museum in Chengdu, Sichuan province, plays host to celebrations during Spring Festival, including a lantern show, parades of Egyptian culture and performances by local opera troupes. [Photo provided to China Daily]

To most residents of Chengdu, Spring Festival is often linked with large-scale lantern shows. Jinsha Site Museum is one of the country's first museums that also hosts a lantern show－this year with an Egyptian twist.

The pyramids and other symbolic images from ancient Egypt have been turned into large-scale lantern installations made of bamboo, cloth and paper. Some are more than 15 meters tall. By day, they are outdoor decorations; at night, they lighten up the sky over the museum and echo the lanterns of ancient Sichuan culture.

The museum, covering 4,000 square meters, is where the golden Sun Bird was unearthed and is now exhibited. It is said to have been crafted by people from the Shu (an old name for Sichuan) civilization some 3,000 years ago.

Though there is a time gap between ancient Shu and ancient Egypt, they did share the same reverence for two things: gold and the sun, says Wang Yi, curator of the museum.

"The ancient Shu people made a golden smiling mask, and there's the Tutankhamun's mask (from Egypt) that is made of gold, too," Wang says.