Highlights from Palace Museum's 90th anniversary exhibitions

A statue from the Eastern Han Dynasty showing a seated couple holding and kissing each other in the Palace Museum in Beijing, October 8, 2015. [Photo/IC]

2. "The first kiss" statue at Cining Palace

The "first kiss" statue is a stone statue from the Eastern Han Dynasty, which has a seated couple holding and kissing each other. According to experts, the statue was unearthed from an ancient tomb in Pengshan county of Sichuan province, and may have demonstrated the affection between the couple buried there.

The name "first kiss" was given by Chinese literati Guo Moruo the first time he saw the statue.

Cining Palace (meaning the Palace of Compassion and Tranquility) in the western part of the Palace Museum used to be home to the emperors' mothers.

Now it has been converted into a sculpture pavilion which displays more than 400 sculpture relics, spanning from the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC) to Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). A large stone Buddhist statue and a Bodhisattva statue from the Northern Qi Dynasty (AD 550-577) and a 6th Banchan Lama statue from the Qing Dynasty are highlights of the exhibition.