The baffling variety of the vast collection found at the National Archives of Publications and Culture (NAPC) might pleasantly surprise visitors—classics from thousands of years ago, newspapers and magazines published before the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, yellowing packages of different cigarette brands, cassette tapes from the 1980s when pop music started to thrive on the Chinese mainland and DVDs of foreign films like the 1939 Hollywood blockbuster Gone With the Wind… Their diversity records and carries on China’s traditional culture and communication with others.
Rather than a museum, a library,
