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With the arrival of summer vacation, the popularity of visiting the Palace Museum is increasing. At 11 a.m., the flow of people entering the Forbidden City usually begins to increase. In the Meridian Gate Square under the scorching sun, although there are many tourists, it is orderly. Visitors line up for security checks and ticket inspections and can enter within 20 minutes. The various departments of the Palace Museum Security Department work together to create a good visiting experience for the visitors. "Although our work is busier than other times of the year, we can better ensure the safety of visitors and provide more thoughtful services to them." Wang Bo, Party Branch Secretary and Director of the Palace Museum Security Department, said.

The Party Branch of the Security Department of the Palace Museum has 31 members and is one of the "four strongest" Party branches in the central and state organs. As one of the main responsible teams for the security management of the Palace Museum, the branch has continued to deepen the integration of party building and business in recent years, giving full play to the role of the branch as a fighting fortress and the vanguard and exemplary role of Party members, continuously improving the quality of security work, and continuously delivering the warmth of service work.

Party building guides the construction of a "safe Forbidden City"

In 2019, the Palace Museum proposed the "Four Palace Museums" construction system of "Safe Palace Museum", "Academic Palace Museum", "Digital Palace Museum" and "Vibrant Palace Museum", among which "Safe Palace Museum" is the most basic and primary task. The Palace Museum hopes to better implement the idea of ​​"protection first" through the construction of "Safe Palace Museum" and truly and completely protect the Palace Museum, a cultural heritage shared by mankind.

In order to implement the construction of "Safe Forbidden City", the Party Branch of the Security Department organically integrates party building work with business work, and implements party building work in all aspects of business work. With the help of "three meetings and one lesson", theme party days, organizational life meetings, reading seminars and other forms, party members and cadres are organized to conduct regular centralized learning, taking the team building problems reflected by the difficulties and weak links in business work as the starting point of work, focusing on improving the party work mechanism, and continuously standardizing the work of the party branch. The branch will also regularly organize centralized reading seminars, requiring all members of the branch to take strengthening theoretical learning as the starting point, insist on reading the original works and understanding the principles, emphasize the implementation of the new development concept, and actively integrate the practical requirements of Chinese-style modernization with the mission and vision of the Palace Museum.

This year, the branch has thoroughly implemented the overall deployment of the Palace Museum Party Committee on party discipline learning and education, and guided party members and cadres to learn, know, understand and abide by discipline through carrying out thematic learning activities on the "Regulations on Disciplinary Punishment of the Communist Party of China" and branch secretaries giving special party lectures.

Party members set an example to improve service quality

"The Forbidden City not only welcomes tens of thousands of visitors every day, but also needs to deal with complex issues such as vehicle management and traffic dispatch, among which safety issues are particularly important." Yin Yandong, the head of the Traffic Management Section of the Security Department with 40 years of work experience, is well aware of the heavy responsibilities of traffic management. "In the first half of this year alone, the Traffic Management Section completed 527 traffic guarantee tasks for the opening ceremonies of various exhibitions, large-scale conferences, official activities, and guided a total of 1,521 vehicles; in addition, it also completed traffic guidance tasks for the transportation of cultural relics, maintenance of ancient buildings, road construction, emergency repairs, and water and electricity reconstruction within the museum."

The work faced by the Traffic Management Section is a microcosm of the huge and complex security work of the Palace Museum. Based on a comprehensive analysis of the overall security reception situation, the Party Branch of the Security Department continued to play the role of a fighting fortress in accordance with the overall requirements of the Palace Museum on service improvement.

In view of the large number of visitors and the increase in underage visitors during the summer vacation, in order to shorten the time for visitors to enter the hospital and reduce the pressure of passenger flow in the Meridian Gate area, the Security Inspection Department adjusted the movement of visitors from Duanmen to Meridian Gate, and integrated the baggage storage area, ticket window, and consultation window into the audience service center on the west side of Duanmen Square, providing one-stop convenient services for the general public. At the same time, six "fast-pass" plans were formulated according to the categories of visitors entering the hospital, including team channels, individual channels, no-bag channels, study channels, barrier-free channels, and love channels, which greatly shortened the time for visitors to queue for ticket inspection and further improved the overall accessibility of the visitor entrance. In addition, the Security Inspection Department also worked with the Duanmen Management Department, the Guard Team and other departments to formulate a three-level plan to deal with large passenger flows.

In response to various issues raised by the public, such as commercial filming personnel affecting the visitor experience, the Palace Museum revised its admission rules last year to prohibit commercial filming activities within the museum. In order to vigorously rectify such behavior, the Public Security Management Section has invested a lot of energy in investigation and surveillance, and has also summarized the working method of "observation, inquiry, and inspection".

According to incomplete statistics, the barrier-free passage of the Meridian Gate of the Palace Museum serves 800 to 900 wheelchairs and baby carriages every day; in the past year, the total number of luggage stored by visitors is nearly 240,000; during the peak summer tourism season, the Palace Museum receives more than 90,000 visitors per day... Behind these numbers, it reflects the heavy workload undertaken by the Security Department of the Palace Museum. In daily work, the Party branch members of the Security Department of the Palace Museum rush to the front and handle emergencies in a timely manner on the front line. Faced with the high temperature and exposure in summer, the Party members are all tanned.

"Party members of the branch actively carry forward the spirit of not fearing hardship or fatigue, rush forward and take the lead, and use practical actions to improve the audience service experience, truly interpreting the confidence and determination to 'be a qualified party member'." Wang Bo said.

Jointly build an "Academic Palace Museum" through scientific research

In 2025, the Palace Museum will celebrate its 100th anniversary. Nearly a hundred years of heritage has accumulated rich experience in the safety management of the Palace Museum. "In terms of branch team building, we have also done a good job of 'passing on knowledge and helping others', with old masters leading young people to pass on good experience from generation to generation," said Wang Bo.

In order to build a security team in the new era, the Party Branch of the Security Department, on the basis of good inheritance, will integrate the construction of the branch team into the development mission of the "Academic Forbidden City", coordinate the construction of a comprehensive quality management system, carry out solid safety protection research, fully promote safety culture communication, and improve the academic level of safety scientific research.

Around the theme of the Forbidden City's security, the Party Branch of the Security Department has gradually formed a unique academic team. In the past two years, the Party Branch of the Security Department has organized 13 comrades from the entire department to use their spare time to review more than 500 historical archives and written materials on security since the establishment of the Palace Museum, and interviewed more than ten retired experts to compile and complete the "Hundred Years of Security and Protection Volume of the Palace Museum", which, based on the experience of the Forbidden City's security work over the past century, laid a solid foundation for better development in the future.

In order to further strengthen academic research in the field of security, the Party Branch of the Security Department takes "truth-seeking and pragmatism" as its foundation, focuses on the outstanding issues that restrict the security work of museums, and compiles the "Museum Security Management Standards (Draft)" after field investigations of many museums and other cultural and historical institutions; organizes party members and business backbones to participate in or be responsible for "Research on the Mechanism and Evaluation and Early Warning of Fire Spread in Cultural Relics Buildings" and "Research on Key Technologies for Safety Risk Warning of Large Ming and Qing Ancient Buildings (Groups)" as well as two "13th Five-Year Plan" national key research and development plans.

"Through these scientific research works, while we have formed a series of scientific research and academic achievements, we have also further trained the team and consolidated the capabilities for the branch to build an academic echelon that 'integrates learning, thinking, and application, and unifies knowledge, belief, and action.' In the next step, we will take the opportunity of studying and implementing the spirit of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee to continue to build learning, service-oriented, and innovative grassroots party organizations, continuously improve and improve the quality of work, and make greater contributions to the construction of the 'Four Forbidden Cities'." Wang Bo said.