In 1598, the earliest music boxes to arrive in China were brought to Beijing by Italian Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci. By the early 1990s, China had developed its first domestically designed music movement, marking a significant milestone in the country's music history. This exhibition area primarily showcases music boxes, barrel organs, barrel organ cabinets, and related musical artifacts. 

Here, visitors can explore the evolution of sound technology and discover the mechanical applications of sound aesthetics. Initially, in the Western world, these boxes that played music through mechanical operation were uniformly referred to as "music boxes." Upon their introduction to China, they acquired the direct translation "music box." Ancient Chinese people divided Musical Instruments into eight categories according to the materials they were made of. It contains gold, stone, silk, bamboo, pao, soil, leather, and wood. It is called eight-tones. When these Western mechanical sound boxes arrived, they were integrated with China's eight-tone classification system, gradually giving rise to the name "eight-tone box."

In this exhibition area, you can hear the music from an 1880 imperial cabinet music box.