During the summer of 2025, I served as a preservation intern at the Palace Museum, working closely with mentors from the Engineering Management Department. Over the course of three months, from mid-May to mid-August, I participated in a variety of conservation projects that allowed me to engage with both the practical and intellectual dimensions of cultural heritage preservation.
At the outset, I contributed to the completion of a booklet documenting collected samples from the Mental Cultivation Hall. This task involved arranging the sequence of samples and drafting descriptive entries, which not only ensured the material was clearly archived but also deepened my appreciation of how systematic documentation underpins long-term preservation work. Building on this, I undertook a literature review of scholarship and critiques of the Mental Cultivation Hall over the past fifty years. Through organizing and analyzing these texts, I gained a clearer perspective on how the Palace Museum’s own work has been evaluated within the broader field of preservation. I utilized the skills that I learnt from HSPV 6600 Theories of Historic Preservation to analyze how perspectives in preservation shifted in the past few decades.
Another significant part of my internship was archival organization. I helped restructure the department’s records from the past decade, which had accumulated in a fragmented and disorganized manner. I designed a new filing system for digitalized materials, including multimedia recordings and first-hand preservation archives. To enhance the system’s usability, I redrew technical drawings and graphics so that they corresponded neatly to the reorganized files. This experience taught me the importance of archival comprehensiveness and the value of accessibility for future research.
In addition to these responsibilities, I had the opportunity to develop my own research perspective. By examining the Forbidden City as a case study, I proposed a new approach to evaluating the authenticity of palace architecture complexes. This idea was well received by my mentors, who encouraged me to pursue it further. I subsequently drafted an independent funding proposal, which has since been submitted for review. This process gave me valuable experience in connecting theoretical reflection with practical institutional support.
My daily tasks included documenting ongoing preservation work, particularly related to wooden structure conservation. Through careful observation and record-keeping, I not only learned about traditional construction techniques but also contributed to the archival continuity that will guide future preservationists in identifying areas of past intervention.
Looking back, this internship was both rewarding and transformative. It allowed me to contribute meaningfully to conservation projects while cultivating essential skills in documentation, archival management, and critical research. More importantly, it gave me firsthand insight into how theory, practice, and institutional collaboration intersect in the field of heritage preservation. These experiences have strengthened my resolve to continue exploring the challenges of conservation with both academic rigor and practical sensitivity.
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