Museums to exhibit 1,000 national treasures

Beijing's Capital Museum will hold four exhibitions featuring nearly 1,000 national cultural relics to demonstrate the brilliant Chinese culture for domestic and overseas Olympic audiences.

All the collections will be chosen from China's more than 70 local museums from 27 provinces and cities for display from Wednesday through the end of September, said Yao An, the Capital Museum deputy curator.

With different focuses, the exhibitions are to show respectively China's 5,000-year history, precious relics in Beijing, the Yangtze River civilization and the ancient sports games that reflect the life of ancient Chinese.

"Only those most precious collections in local museums can be chosen as exhibits, and most are first class national relics," Yao said. "Many relics are being shown in the capital for the first time".

All the exhibitions are held for free except for the one featuring China's long history.