Some 120,000 people visited four State-owned museums in Chengdu, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan province on May 18.

The Jinsha Site Museum in Chengdu, Sichuan province, was packed with visitors on the 35th International Museum Day, May 18, 2011.?[Photo/chinadaily.com.cn]

The popularity of the museums was due to free admission on Wednesday which was the 35th International Museum Day, said insiders.

At 10 am yesterday, visitors had been waiting in long queues in order to get free tickets to enter the Jinsha Site Museum in the western part of the city. Many had to drive around because they could not find the parking lot.

To cope with the madding crowd, the museum had to increase its ticket examiners from two to four. It also had to keep the number of visitors in the museum at between 5,000 and 6,000 each time by distributing the free tickets at different time, according to He Xin, an official in the museum.

Before the museum closed, it had received more than 50,000 visitors, she said.

At 10 am, the usually tranquil relic hall of the museum where relics on display in the Jinsha Site Museum were excavated had been overcrowded with visitors who were curious about what several museum employees in white work clothes were doing.

They either carried bottles to spray water on the mud or maintained the site like masons, said Hu Bing, a sophomore with the Chengdu Textile College.

A guide told him that due to weather and other reasons, the site had cracks on the surface, and the museum staff had to water and patch the cracks in line with soil conditions.

Never before have I visited the famous Jinsha Site Museum whose 3,000-year-old sungod emblem has been designated as the logo of China Cultural Heritage by the National Administration of Cultural Heritage. Thanks to free admission on the 35th International Museum Day, I saw not only relics on display but also how the museum staff protected the site. It is very interesting, Hu told his classmates.

While acclaiming the free admission yesterday, Yuan Tingdong, an expert in Sichuan culture, said he hoped all the museums could offer more free admission or preferential treatment so that visitors could go to museums as easily as they visit libraries.

The admission fee for the Jinsha Site Museum is 80 yuan while that for the other three State-owned museums is 60 yuan each. At present, all the four museums offer free admission only on the International Museum Day.

To make it easier for more people to visit the Jinsha Site Museum, the museum launched the so-called “Friends of the Museum” membership system yesterday.

Each visitor could become a member by going through the procedure in the Tourist Reception Center beside the south gate of the museum.

With the membership card, each visitor can receive free information pertaining to exhibitions, lectures and other events in the museum and enjoy a 10 percent discount while purchasing the entrance tickets for the museum and its 4D film. They can also be invited to lectures and cultural events for members, He said.

More than 500 people had become members of the “Friends of the Museum” membership system when the Jinsha Site Museum was closed yesterday evening.