The central government is planning to build a 6,000-square-meter museum in Shanghai to pay homage to China's tobacco industry, which was born in the city in 1902.
But industry experts warn that there might not be enough of the turn-of-the-century tobacco-manufacturing equipment here that can be restored and exhibited.
The reason: The "relics," as some people have put it, were sold for scrap many years ago.
Such was the case as recently as the 1980s with several cigarette machines imported from Britain in the 1930s.
"Few of the old machines, especially those imported from overseas before 1949, still exist in the city," said Ling Lei, who works for the Shanghai Tobacco Industry Association newsletter.
Museum organizers acknowledged they are scurrying through other parts of the nation, attempting to find early equipment which is used to make cigarettes.
If they are unsuccessful, they said, they will use replicas - and a lot of photographs.
A similar problem is confronting organizers for planned museums that would focus on textiles and mechanical tools, reported the Chinese-language Wenhui Daily.
Such a predicament seems emblematic of Shanghai, a city seemingly in a relentless pursuit of the future and modernity that the past appears to be disposable. Unlike Beijing, which basks in the glory of the centuries-old Great Wall of China, the Summer Palace, the Temple of Heaven and the Forbidden City, the city boasts of its relatively new Shanghai Museum and Oriental Pearl TV Tower.
Prior to 1949, when the People's Republic of China was established, there were more than 180 tobacco manufacturers in Shanghai, accounting for 60 percent of the nation's total, tobacco industry specialists said.
A British tobacco company introduced cigarettes to Shanghai in 1902, when China was still under its last dynasty, the Qing, said historians of the Chinese tobacco industry.
The State Tobacco Monopoly Administration is seeking bids for the museum project and hopes to break ground in July, said Shi Songnian, secretary-general of the Shanghai Tobacco Industry Association, which is assisting in the museum project.
The museum, on Changyang Road in Yangpu District, is scheduled to open by 2003. Plans call for the museum displaying different brands of tobacco products, packs and machinery from different periods.
(Eastday.com.cn 03/27/2001)
