The Palace Museum
has for the first time ruled
that both employees and visitors will
be punished for smoking onsite from
Saturday, an official with the museum
told the Global Times.
Both
health and cultural heritage experts
welcomed the ban, and said they
hope the Forbidden City will enforce
the rule.
A media officer
from the museum, who asked for
anonymity, said that in the past,
only areas that were open to
tourists had a ban on
smoking.
"Staff could smoke in
offices. Now no one is allowed
to smoke in the whole museum
area. This is to reduce the
potential fire hazard which is the
most pressing problem the museum
faces," she said.
According to
the officer, if an employee is
found smoking, all the people in
his group will be deprived of
their yearly "fire bonus," given for
fire prevention actions, although she
would not say how much this
is.
"We can't give
fines to tourists so we just
discourage them from smoking, but
we'll send them to the police
if they disobey," said the
official.
She told the Global
Times that tourists are hard to
manage because even though no-smoking
signs are posted in the museum,
some people still secretly
smoke.
Zeng Yizhi, from the
International Committee of Monuments and
Sites in China, said that it is
necessary to ban smoking in the
entire complex, because the museum has
many wooden structures and precious
cultural relics like silk cloth and
papers, which can catch fire
easily.
"The museum should
also control the numbers of tourists
every day; it's troublesome to
supervise too many people," said
Zeng.
Lawyer Liu Ziruo told
the Global Times that because the
smoking tourists do not violate any
law, even the police do not
have the right to punish
them.
Although Beijing instituted
a ban on smoking in historic
sites in 2008, and banned smoking in
all public places in 2011, neither ban
is well-enforced, said Yang Jie from
the tobacco control center of the
Chinese Center for Disease Control and
Prevention.
"The ban on smoking
in the Palace Museum is good
for health. Smoking in public areas,
which also affects passive smokers,
causes lung cancer and heart disease,"
said Yang.
Only officers from
Beijing Patriotic Health Campaign Committee
are able to levy fines on
smokers who flout the ban, which
can be up to 200 yuan ($32.54). Public
places, including tourist sites and
restaurants, could be fined from 5,000
to 30,000 yuan if people are caught
smoking inside, said Yang.
A
fire broke out in a museum
watchtower on the evening of October
17, 2008. While the tower sustained some
damage, firefighters arrived in time
to extinguish the blaze, the website
ifeng.com reported. The cause was
not reported.