Scandal forces museum full of fakes to shut down

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A Chinese museum has been forced to close after claims that its 40,000-strong collection of supposedly ancient relics was almost entirely composed of fakes.

The Jibaozhai Museum, located in Jizhou, opened in 2010 with its 12 exhibition halls packed with apparently unique cultural gems.

But the museum's collection, while extensive, appears ultimately to have been flawed. On Tuesday, the museum's ticket offices were shut amid claims that many of the exhibits were knock-offs that had been bought for between 100 yuan ($21) and 2000 yuan.

The museum's public humiliation began earlier this month when Ma Boyong, a Chinese writer, noticed a series of inexplicable discrepancies during a visit and posted his findings online.

Among the most striking errors were artefacts engraved with writing purportedly showing that they dated back more than 4000 years to the times of China's Yellow Emperor. However, according to a report in the Shanghai Daily, the writing appeared in simplified Chinese characters that only came into widespread use in the 20th century.

The collection also contained a "Tang Dynasty" five-colour porcelain vase despite the fact that this technique was invented hundreds of years later, during the Ming Dynasty.

Museum staff tried to play down the scandal. Wei Yingjun, the museum's chief consultant, conceded that it did not have the proper provincial authorisations to operate but said he was "quite positive" that at least 80 of its 40,000 objects had been confirmed as authentic.

"I'm positive that we do have authentic items in the museum. There might be fake items too but we would need [to carry out] identification and verification [to confirm that]," he told the Daily Telegraph.

Wei said that objects of "dubious" origin had been "marked very clearly" so as not to mislead visitors.