"Knowledge is power," a famous saying by British philosopher Francis Bacon, might be interpreted in a new perspective by visitors to the Shanghai Museum of Chinese Keju (Imperial Examination ) System.

Less than a 30-minute ride from the coastal metropolis of Shanghai , and very close to the modern structure of the Formula One Shanghai Circuit, the museum, formerly called Shanghai Jiading County Museum, offers people from home and abroad a vivid account of how, for at least 1,000 years, feudal and dynastic China singled out talents for its political machine through the imperial examinations.

The largest and best equipped of its kind, the museum officially opened to the public a week ago.

"We feared that the museum may be too academic and would only interest researchers of the subject or foreign visitors wanting to know more about traditional Chinese culture. But we were wrong," says Shao Hui, deputy director of the museum.

Since its trial opening during this Spring Festival , a total of about 6,000 locals and visitors from Shanghai and neighbouring provinces came to the museum, she said. "I saw many people come here with friends or their family members."

Shao and her colleagues have done a lot to help attract and hold visitors. They began to collect exhibits about the Chinese imperial examination system more than a decade ago.

One of the most eye-catching showpieces at the Shanghai Museum of Chinese Keju (Imperial Examination) System: a jacket sporting texts from Confucian Classics, used for cheating during the imperial examination in ancient China. The museum purchased it at a Beijing auction last year for about 30,000 yuan (US$3,750).

Interesting exhibits

The museum itself is housed in an 800-year-old Confucius Temple that, surrounded by trees, flowers, stone tablets, and a pond, was heavily damaged and deserted almost a century ago.

The renovated Confucius Temple now constitutes the main part of the museum, displaying under five categories at least 1,000 material exhibits, a host of photos, charts, figures, mimic examination stalls, wax models of ancient scholars and intellectuals in their private studies, and video programmes with English translations.

Most of the items on show have been touring foreign countries and Chinese provinces over the years and have so far received a warm response, which encouraged the museum's managing board to establish the first museum of its kind in China, with an accumulated investment of at least 10 million yuan (US$ 1.2 million), according to Guo Zhengming, a senior researcher and general art director with the museum.

Many of the exhibits on display are rarely seen in any other part of China or the world. Some items are the only existing samples of relics from the long-lived examination system that helped determine qualified candidates for civil service positions and was removed by the late Qing Dynasty in 1905, said Guo.

Among the eye-catching exhibits are three exam papers used for the competition at local and regional levels, and a paper notice of exam results.

But the most interesting items are probably a set of mini-versions of classic Chinese books, and two jackets, one made of cotton and the other from silk, inked with texts from classic books, all meant to be used for cheating during the exams.

On the cotton jacket, its owner took the trouble of copying 353 model essays of 200,000 characters in the hope that they might be useful in finishing the exam papers.

Editor: Lency