The Palace Museum’s cultural products. (Photo/Chinanews.com)
Chinese museums are developing their own creative cultural products following the Palace Museum’s success in this area, Workers’ Daily reported on Feb.27.
The Palace Museum has developed more than 10,000 kinds of cultural and creative products. In 2017, these products created 1.5 billion yuan of revenue for museum, said Shan Jixiang, curator of the Palace Museum.
The Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Museum has followed in the steps of the Palace Museum. It has developed 300 cultural and creative products in six categories since it started to do business in 2017.
The Guangdong Provincial Museum is the first in the country to roll out cake products. Last year, the museum’s revenue generated by cultural and creative products was 19.4 million yuan, a noticeable increase from 13.3 million yuan in 2017.
In the northwestern Chinese city of Dunhuang, cultural and creative products have brought traditional culture back to life. In recent years, the Dunhuang Academy has adopted technologies such as VR to draw cultural relics closer to people. The annual sales volume of the academy in 2017 was 17.1 million yuan.
Statistics indicate that tourism revenue generated from shopping stands between 60 and 70 percent in developed countries, and the number in China is below 40 percent.
A surveyed also showed that 82.1 percent of people have bought cultural and creative products, and 79.1 percent would choose cultural and creative products as gifts for their friends.
Between 2014 and 2018, culture and museum authorities unveiled at least nine documents to support the development of cultural and creative products. According to a five-year plan on the country’s cultural heritage development, by 2020, China plans to build 50 museum cultural and creative brands, and launch 10 research and development bases for such products.