“Cultural economics.” That was President Xi Jinping’s thrust in his discussions with fellow deputies to the National People’s Congress (NPC) from Jiangsu Province during last year’s NPC session. Economically developed provinces generally see a cultural boom, he said. “It is worthwhile looking into the reason behind it.”

One year later, on March 5, 2024, Song Yan, an NPC deputy and executive vice curator of the Nanjing Museum Administration, spoke at a group meeting with President Xi, detailing how the integration of culture and tourism had seen a museum craze in the historical city of Nanjing last year, boosting both economic and social development. In 2023, Nanjing welcomed over 200 million tourist arrivals, of which more than 34 million flocked to the city’s many museums, proving that the cultural and creative industry, empowered by high technology and creativity, has become an engine for economic growth.

Song Yan, an NPC deputy and executive vice curator of the Nanjing Museum Administration. 

Museum Magic on Consumption 

Song, who has been in the museum industry for over 30 years, loves the “City of Museums,” the moniker earned by Nanjing because of its rich cultural heritage and museum resources. "We have 77 registered museums in Nanjing, including 15 national museums,” she said.

She then mentioned the “star” French window at the Oriental Metropolitan Museum, which takes up almost an entire wall. Last November, the window went viral on TikTok as the best vantage point from which visitors can relish the wonderful scene of Nanjing’s autumn. Through the clear glass panes, enthralled visitors watched the riot of colors presented by the autumnal green, yellow and red trees, the Presidential Palace with its signature grey-tiled eaves, and the skyline of Nanjing’s bustling Xinjiekou pedestrian street.

During the eight-day Spring Festival holiday this year, Nanjing’s museums hosted many dragon-themed activities to celebrate the Year of the Dragon. Visitors also admired dragon-shaped artifacts in the Oriental Metropolitan Museum, the Nanjing Folk Museum, the Grand Bao’en Temple, and the Nanjing Yunjin Museum. They included a dragon-shaped pottery pedestal from the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317-420), a celadon double dragon-handled chicken-head pot from the Southern Dynasties (420-589), bronze mirrors with dragon designs from different dynasties, and the Yunjin dragon robe, the imperial robe made of Yunjin brocade patterned with dragons.

Song decorated the window with a red dragon-shaped Chinese papercut, which was a bonus for the visitors who flocked to take photos of it, the window and the vistas outside. “The harmonious blend of traditional culture and holiday activities enriched the expression of urban culture and also stimulated the tourism market,” she said.

Museums, the custodians of civilizations, are attracting more and more young people. The “Summer of Culture and Museum” launched in Nanjing in 2003 has become an annual event geared especially to engage schoolchildren during their summer holiday. The event features a variety of exhibitions and activities, like binding books in the way it was done in ancient China. At the Oriental Metropolitan Museum, over 240 young people have been volunteering as docents, telling the stories behind the national treasures in the museum, symbols of China’s artistic excellence.

“The museum craze reflects people’s demand for a rich cultural life, and the continuous improvement of the cultural confidence of the Chinese people,” Song said. Many of the visitors are young people who are eager to share their experience on social media, she said, mulling over using digital means to “bring cultural relics to life” so that visitors can better understand their significance and better appreciate them.

“In the future, we will integrate museums with tourism. The historical and cultural relics will tell their own stories while they are protected and passed on to the next generation. It can be a new driving force for economic and social development,” she added.

An Ancient Civilization Revived 

Henan, another culturally rich province in central China, has also benefited from its legacy. This Spring Festival holiday, over 50 million tourists visited the place known as the birthplace of the Chinese civilization, bringing in tourism revenue of nearly RMB 30 billion.

The new Yinxu Museum opened in Henan’s Anyang city on February 26. It is the first national museum on the Shang civilization. Yin was the capital of the Shang Dynasty, which reigned from the 16th to the 11th century B.C., and the ruins of the ancient capital are famous for its large collections of oracle bone writings, the earliest mature writing system known to the world. Since its inauguration, the magnificent museum, designed like ancient bronze ware, has become one of the top destinations on people’s bucket lists.

In the new Yinxu Museum in Henan’s Anyang City, nearly 4,000 sets of cultural relics, including bronze, pottery, oracle bones, and jade are publicly displayed on March 1, 2024. 

He Yuling, an NPC deputy, is the deputy director of the Anyang Workstation of the Institute of Archaeology, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He has been working at the archaeological site of the Yin ruins for over 20 years and saw the new museum taking shape. Ahead of the opening of the second session of the 14th NPC, he gave an interview at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on March 5, telling the story of the ruins.

He said over the past century, archaeologists have made unremitting efforts to discover the sites of the highly developed bronze civilization in East Asia. They have made many important discoveries in the new era, including excavating a wide avenue where several carriages could run parallelly, palace garden ruins and boundary ditches that testified to the advanced Shang civilization. They also found methods of making bronze ware like the Houmuwu cauldron, a massive square bronze cauldron weighing over 800 kilograms and credited as the heaviest among ancient bronzeware. Such discoveries have taken the research on the civilization in Yin to a new height.

He said the new museum, with a display area of 22,000 square meters, has nearly 4,000 items of cultural relics, including pottery, jade, bronze ware and oracle bones. The museum uses artificial intelligence, 3D technology and other sophisticated technology to build an interactive venue for culture and history. “It presents the bronze civilization more than 3,000 years ago with new concepts and methods, taking visitors on a millennium-old journey to the Shang civilization,” He said. His dream is to build a digital platform for the oracle bone inscriptions found in the Yin ruins, the birthplace of Chinese characters.

Lyu Jianzhong, an NPC deputy, is the founder of the Tang West Market in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province. 

When Culture Meets Tourism 

Lyu Jianzhong, an NPC deputy, is an entrepreneur who founded the Tang West Market in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, home of the famed Terracotta Warriors. It is a top tourist site promoting the intangible cultural heritage of the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and the ancient Silk Road. Lyu’s forte is innovating the cultural industry.

In 2023, Shaanxi, another province rich in history and culture, received 109 million domestic tourists, a year-on-year increase of more than 270 percent. The eight key industrial chains of the province’s cultural and tourism industry notched up revenue of around RMB 773 billion. Shaanxi invested about RMB 157 billion in more than 300 cultural and tourism projects in 2023.

Xi’an, the provincial capital, was known as Chang’an in ancient China. It boasts a history of over 3,100 years of urban construction and over 1,100 years as the capital of various dynasties. “On the crest of success, with my horse trotting in the breeze, I enjoy all the flowers in Chang’an in a single day.” This and other evocative lines by Tang Dynasty poets regained popularity in 2023, thanks to the Chinese animated period drama Chang An, which took the audience back to ancient city, where the literati and scholars gathered and poetry, music, and other forms of art blossomed.

A large number of Chinese and foreign students visiting the Tang West Market in Xi’an, to experience the ancient life of ages long ago and discover the origin of the Silk Road, on April 18, 2023. 

Lyu mentioned Xi’an now has many popular immersive historical and cultural experiences, such as the Datang Everbright City, a tourist and leisure district themed on the Tang culture; the food and games street of Chang’an 24 Hours; and the Tang West Market, the site of which was the starting point of the ancient Silk Road in the Sui (581-618) and Tang dynasties. It was there that the Eastern and Western cultures met and blended creatively and inclusively.

He suggested accelerating the construction of the Digital Cultural Silk Road while creating an International Cultural Trade Base that would transform Shaanxi into a model of reform and opening-up in China’s inland areas. This will also enable Shaanxi to lead in exploring new models of cultural and people-to-people exchanges through cultural trade. It would enhance international understanding, friendship and trust, and promote the building of a community with a shared future for humanity.

Lyu also emphasized developing “new quality productive forces in the cultural industry” by integrating technologies, such as AI, XR metaverse, big data, blockchain, and 5G/6G, with the cultural industry to create new cultural experiences and industrial models. He suggested selecting enterprises with the potential to be new driving forces and giving them financial, fiscal, and tax support.

It has been proved that in-depth integration of culture, economy, and technology leads to greater productivity and innovation and propels high-quality growth. “We should be culturally self-confident, tell China’s stories well, and enhance the global impact of the Chinese culture. It is our new cultural mission in the new era to meet people’s multifaceted cultural needs,” he said.