The Ancient Greek Olympics has unveiled its curtain there, accompanied by four other exhibits featuring ancient Chinese civilization.

One week after they were staged in the run-up to the summer Olympics that opens on Friday, these exhibits are promoting the blend of Western and Eastern civilizations.

Visitors almost tripled from the usual 5,000 a day to more than 13,000 on Thursday, forcing the museum management to consider providing evening services to reduce daytime crowds. That could make it the first museum in China to open in the evening.

Unlike stadiums teeming with cheering spectators, the ancient Olympic Games exhibit, enlivened by 166 Greek relics, received only whispered but frequent "wows". The sculptures, pottery and coins, mostly being shown for the first time overseas here, conjured up not only sports but also the long-lost competitions in drama, poems and music.

In the exhibition halls upstairs, there's a low murmur of admiring gasps and camera clicks, attesting to the awesomeness of the more than 1,800 top-class art treasures on loan from more than70 domestic museums, including China's oldest bone flute dating back 8,000 years.

Also on display: a gold-leaf sunbird 3,000 years old, jade burial suits for royal families of the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-24 AD) and painted scrolls featuring 87 immortals of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD).

"This is indeed a chance that comes once in a lifetime, as you might visit every Chinese and Greek museum, only to see just a part of them. Some exhibits, from China in particular, were not even open before to the general public," said curator Guo Xiaoling.

That explains the endurance of visitors standing in a line that winds for 300 meters, from the basement to the entrance of the exhibition "Chinese Memory" on the first floor, and the regrets of foreigners on package tours who could only stop for a while before rushing to the next site.

"We are facing the increasing pressure of receiving large numbers of visitors. As the exhibitions will be open till October, we encourage Beijing residents to visit later," said Guo.

Amid the foreigners who make up approximately 10 percent of the daily visitors, Barbara Rendall was lucky to get in. She lives in Beijing, where she works as an English literature professor at Beijing University.

She roamed around the museum, visiting one after another of the lesser exhibits and even the book stores, happily relishing her new understanding of China.

"It's wonderful and exciting to move from one culture into another because it helps you get rid of fixed ideas that are wrong," she said.

When she first came to China to teach at Xiamen University in 1984, Rendall was bothered by her inability to find the right food and coffee. Her then 7-year-old daughter felt bad when older women came up and touched her blond hair.

"The longer I have been here, the less have I seen differences in culture, because we feel more at home," she said about having returned in 2004.

Noticing many Chinese impressed by the Greek pottery featuring a variety of athletes, Rendall said with a smile: "Who knows? Maybe after the Olympics, the Chinese would also paint athletes on their pots, bowls and plates!"

DECIPHERING THE REAL CHINA

Though it's hard to gauge what and how much impact the Greek relics would have on the Chinese, curator Guo said the museum did try to bring Chinese and foreign audiences some "genuine" cultural flavor from the home of the ancient Olympics.

Greek Ambassador to China Michael Cambanis valued the timing of the exhibitions at the opening ceremony, saying that the 2008 Olympics mean a lot to Greek people because the event symbolizes the Olympic torch being delivered from the cradle of Western civilization to that of the East.

Of course, the torch relay from Athens to Beijing was anything but easy. The trip, envisioned as a good chance for China, an Olympic host for the first time, to reach out to the outside world turned controversial amid protests, such as those by "pro-Tibet independence" activists.

"It's no accident that the torch relay has hit so many snags en route because many foreigners know little about China. Often times, the Chinese are stereotyped and sometimes misunderstood," said Guo.

For instance, quite a number of foreigners think China has a fondness for the grandiose. Some think Chinese are too concerned about 'face' and others wonder why the Chinese people have shown so much patriotism when it comes to the Olympics.

The key to deciphering these riddles lies in Chinese culture, Guo said.

"If you can't help gasping with admiration at the works on show, which represent the pinnacle of world agricultural civilization, you will sense the long and deeply-rooted pride of Chinese nationality," he said.

This pride goes back for millennia and was eroded only in modern times amid foreign invasion and China's closing itself off from the world.

As the country, comprising one-fifth of the world population, finally makes its way to economic prosperity, it's natural for it to pursue a rejuvenation of national pride and culture, Guo said.

Tang Zhaoliang, the liaison officer with the office of the Beijing 2008 Environmental Building Headquarters, agreed that cultural perspectives would straighten out many misunderstandings.

Critics say Beijing is splurging on electricity for dazzling Olympic lights, although the country is suffering a power crunch. Considering the Chinese tradition of Zhang Deng Jie Cai, meaning hanging up lanterns for festivities, however, one may see the reason why the government has spent so much effort on neon lights, flowers and streamers, he said.

The idea of building antique style brick walls along the sidewalks outside vacated houses or unfinished construction sites, which some foreigners viewed as a fig leaf to hide a mess, actually came from the concept of tidying up one's home before hosting guests, Tang said.

"We all know these projects can't be completed overnight. The idea is not to hide but to try to make our home as pleasant as possible to look at," he said.

CHINA'S NEW ROLE

Increasingly aware of how it is seen by the outside world, China has adopted a long-term vision to host the Olympics as not only a sports gala but a feast for culture.

Exhibitions in the Capital Museum included, as many 3,000 cultural exchange activities involving almost all regions and continents are being staged in Beijing and its six Olympics co-host cities of Qingdao, Qinhuangdao, Tianjin, Shenyang, Hong Kong and Shanghai.

Inside the Olympic village of northern Beijing, athletes may sit back, if they like, savoring Chinese tea and folk music, practicing calligraphy or watching a traditional drama.

In a national Olympic education program, more than 400 million young people have been taught the Olympic motto, "Faster, Higher and Stronger". No parallel can be found in Olympic history.

Rendall, the teacher, thinks it's necessary to pass on the Olympic spirit to the younger generation because the Games make even the poorest, smallest countries, whatever culture they represent, feel equal to others by merely being present.

"Economic globalization has led to the free flow of capital and technology across the world and made competition and interdependence a normal thing among countries and regions. But it's culture that decides the specialty of each one and makes global exchange more active, enduring and efficient," said Yu Pei, director of the World History Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

He foresees an increasingly sweeping cultural blend to come along with the summer Olympics, with the overture starting from China's opening-up and economic reform 30 years ago and the climax featuring a comprehensive dialogue between Chinese and Western civilizations.

"Conciliatory but not accommodating," the doctrine proposed by Confucius more than 2,000 years ago, will remain the essence, in contrast to assimilation or elimination, Yu said.

Unlike the Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Indian civilizations that were either destroyed or displaced, the Chinese civilization stands to be the longest continuous surviving ancient civilization, although the Han people at the core of Chinese civilization had been conquered by northern nomads as well as other "foreign" invaders such as Mongols and Manchus.

The reasons, as Yu pointed out, are the special traits of Chinese civilization, underscoring diversity, tolerance, openness and modesty, which encouraged the Han people to seek the interface of two different cultures.

In a recent interview with overseas media before the Games, President Hu Jintao said that one of the cultural heritages of the Summer Olympics would be to boost exchanges among different cultures.

"If China, a rising power, can contribute anything to the Olympics in the new century, it will be to prevent conflicts and wars and to safeguard peace by boosting the blend among different civilizations," said Men Honghua, professor with the Institute for International Strategic Studies of the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.