Australia's national Chinese Museum re-opened to the public on Sunday 29 August, 2010 after an $1.2m upgrade that has taken six months.  

The upgrade was made possible by a Cultural Precincts Enhancement Grant from the Victorian Government and the generosity of the Museum's sponsors.

As a national museum, the Chinese Museum researches, conserves and promotes the built, social and economic contribution the Chinese community has made to Australia.

Located in the heart of Chinatown, the Museum has upgraded its basement exhibition and its four floors and translated display and exhibition text into Chinese as well as English.

Basement Exhibition:  'FINDING GOLD'

The sound and movement features of the exhibition, which re-creates the adventures of Chinese goldseekers in Australia's 19th century goldfields, have been revitalised with contemporary technology. 

A winding deep mine carved out of the soil below the Museum, takes visitors from one real-life scene to another-from the high seas in a sailing ship from Canton, to Cantonese food in Ah Chang's cookshop.  Visitors can seek their fortunes in the temple of Guan Gong, be entertained by Cantonese opera in a goldfields tent theatre and see diggers doubling their winnings on the Chinese lottery.

Many of the sounds, colour, smells and even the miner's words and thoughts are brought back to life in this skilful combination of theatrical effects and technical wizardry.

Ground Floor: NEW Dragon Gallery

The Chinese Museum's new Dragon Gallery enables the Museum's four dragons to be displayed-the Grandfather Dragon, Dai Loong the Big Dragon, the Millennium Dragon and the Little Dragon.  It also includes an AV adventure story for children and a display about dragons in Melbourne.

Melbourne's Millennium Dragon is the world's largest processional dragon-eight men are needed to carry his head and 100 are involved in the dragon procession.  He arrived from China in January 2003.  The Millennium Dragon leaves his home at the Chinese Museum twice a year for the Chinatown Chinese New Year Festival and Moomba festivities. 

The new Chinatown Visitor Centre provides an orientation to Melbourne's Chinatown which extends along Little Bourke Street from Swanston Street to Exhibition Street.

The Chinatown Visitor Centre features displays of historic streetscapes of Chinatown buildings, dating back to the 1850s.   The first Chinese arrived in Victoria as free settlers and under contract as labourers.  Gold discoveries in 1852 brought a deluge of immigrants to the extent that their number reached 42,000 by 1858.  The first Chinese boarding houses in Little Bourke Street were recorded in 1855. 

The area quickly became a place for Chinese to stop and obtain provisions before heading to the goldfields.  Chinese businessmen, supported by benevolent district societies, established accommodation and stores to cater to the miners.  As gold-rush fervour subsided, Chinese miners travelled to other goldfields, returned home or stayed and worked as storekeepers, importers, furniture-makers, herbalists, fruit and vegetable wholesalers, hawkers and restaurateurs. The area became known as Chinatown, an important residential, economic and social hub for Chinese in Melbourne and the rest of Victoria.   It is a surprising that this remarkable and oldest area of continuous Chinese settlement in the Western World of has not yet been declared a world heritage site.

Melbourne City Council redeveloped the area as a tourist precinct in the 1960s, adding themed archways, lighting and paving.  In 1985 the Museum of Chinese Australian History, more commonly known as the Chinese Museum, was established to research, conserve and promote the built, social and economic contribution the Chinese community has made to Australia. 

The new Visitor Centre offers a self-guided audio walking tour of Chinatown as well as free Chinese tea and Chinese biscuits.

First Floor: NEW Temporary Exhibition Space and Function Space for Corporate and Community events, plus the Chinese Museum Scroll Collection.

The Chinese Museum will be able to provide a changing program of international and local exhibitions, cultural events and contemporary art shows in its new temporary exhibition space

The space currently houses an exhibition of hanging scrolls from the Museum's collection.  The scrolls in the Museum's collection feature the work of Chinese-Australian and overseas artists.

Second Floor:  NEW Bridge of Memories Exhibition

The incredible ethnic diversity of Australia's 21st century population of 21 million makes it one of the most culturally rich and linguistically diverse nations on earth.

Australians come from over 200 different countries. Over 230 languages are spoken, Mandarin being second to English as the most common languages spoken

Numbering close to 700,000 people, 3.3% of the Australian population define themselves as ethnically Chinese-most migrated here in the last 50 years.

The new Bridge of Memories Exhibition explores the complexities of 'identity' through the personal experiences of Chinese Australians who have migrated to Australia from China, Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia and Vietnam.

Through a range of engaging personal accounts the exhibition widens visitors' appreciation of the diverse origins of communities and cultures that make up Australia's multicultural society. The exhibition explores the evolution of diversity through generational change and the ongoing changing values of Australia..

Third Floor: Gallery of Chinese History

The Gallery of Chinese Australian History contains artefacts and photographs depicting 150 years of Chinese people and their descendants in Australia. 

On display are antique costumes, ceramics, musical and scientific instruments, wedding gowns woven in gold, bound feet shoes, the furniture of master cabinet makers, relics of market gardeners, herbalists and traders, and the stories of Chinese community associations from the earliest mutual brotherhood groups through to the social and sporting clubs of the 20th Century.

A spectacular cloisonne replica of an ancient Chinese seismograph stands 50cm high in the Gallery.  In 132 AD, Zhang Heng, a great scientist in the Eastern Han Dynasty, invented the seismograph - the earliest instrument in the world for forecasting and reporting the movement of an earthquake. It is regarded as one of the most brilliant achievements in ancient China.

The Chinese Museum replica seismograph is decorated with a variety of animals including dragons and frogs. If there is an earthquake, the copper ball inside the seismograph will drop out from the mouth of one dragon and fall right into the mouth of the toad below. (There are eight dragons representing eight directions.) From the falling direction of the ball, can determine the direction of the earthquake.

In ancient Chinese philosophy, the dragon symbolizes Yang, while the toad symbolizes Yin. Thus, it the action represents the dialectic relationship between Yin and Yang, upwards and downwards, also movement and stillness.