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Museum Travel: Never Look a Wooden Dove in the Beak

You know when you walk through a museum full of ancient stuff and you wonder if clumsy museum staff ever break anything? (Well, it's something that crosses our minds.)

It happened in China, to some poor staff members of the Wu Wei City Museum. About a year ago two workers told curator Yang Fu they'd dropped a 2000-year-old wooden turtle dove and its beak had broken off. That's bad. Yang Fu, however, didn't want to get into trouble, and simply glued the beak back on and hoped nobody would ever notice.

And no one did--for about a year. Museum bigwigs were preparing for a special exhibition recently, though, and the turtle dove got brought out of the storage cabinet, with glued-on beak there for all to see. And Yang Fu got fired.

So be skeptical when you're next wandering a museum--some of that centuries-old wear and tear might just be the result of clumsy workers.

Related Stories:
· Curator Fired for Gluing Broken Antique [Ananova]
· China Travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: naturalkinds]