As for China, many of the achievements of her 5,000 years of civilization have been assembled in the National Palace Museum. Yet despite the fact that it was the Chinese who invented such things as the compass, gunpowder, and printing long before the Europeans did, Chinese culture has always tended towards the humanities, and therefore has not kept pace with the European countries 'development of museums of science.
衡諸我國，五千年文化固然造就了東方的藝術寶庫﹘﹘故宮博物院；中國人也曾在十五世紀領先歐洲，完成三大發明﹘﹘羅盤、火藥、印刷術，但此後的文化發展，始終傾向人文，也迄未出現能與歐洲齊驅的自然科學博物館。