Beijing's Forbidden City bars tour guides from using loudspeakers

From April 1 this year, Beijing's Palace Museum (aka the Forbidden City) will be banning tour guides from using loudspeakers. 

Museum director Shan Jixiang said in an announcement this afternoon that megaphone-toting tour guides were a "deep-seated malady destroying the atmosphere" of the 595-year-old imperial palace:

The Palace Museum has received constant complaints about the noise pollution caused by amplifying devices, saying it has a serious effect on other visitors and disturbs order and the cultural atmosphere. I have also seen tour guides use all sorts of megaphones and loudspeakers, to the point where several tour guides all crowd around the same area, all of them using amplifying devices. 

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Instead, the UNESCO World Heritage Site will kit tour groups out with personal audio guides. With over 70,000 visitors descending on the 72-hectare site each day, preserving order and ambience is a very tall order, but most visitors will probably agree that this is a decisive step in the right direction.