STORY: Boom of traditional culture drives museum craze in China
DATELINE: Aug. 29, 2023 
LENGTH: 00:02:32
LOCATION: Beijing
CATEGORY: CULTURE

SHOTLIST:
1. various of museums
2. SOUNDBITE 1 (Chinese): ZHANG HUIGUO, Deputy curator, Shanxi Museum
3. SOUNDBITE 2 (Chinese): GAO SHAN, Visitor
4. various of museums
5. SOUNDBITE 3 (Chinese): GUO JINXUAN, Student, No. 3 Experimental Primary School of Sanmenxia City
6. SOUNDBITE 4 (Chinese): LIU YANG, Teacher, No. 3 Experimental Primary School of Sanmenxia City

STORYLINE:

Booking a museum ticket, during this hectic summer vacation in China, is not easy.

Aspiring visitors may be disappointed by the fact that tickets for the entire week might be fully booked.

In response to the "heated-up museum fever during the summer vacation," Beijing Municipal Cultural Heritage Bureau, in a rare move, announced on Aug. 18 that 46 museums in the city would cancel their Monday closures until Aug. 31, allowing visitors to visit museums every day.
   
The surging demand is also visible in packed museum halls across the country.

The Shanxi Museum in Taiyuan, capital of north China's Shanxi Province, had welcomed a total of 1.11 million visits this year as of Aug. 15.

Among them, 400,000 visits, or more than one-third of the total, had been recorded during the period from July 1 to Aug. 15.

The number of visits to the museum for the entire year 2019 was tallied at 1.41 million.

SOUNDBITE 1 (Chinese): ZHANG HUIGUO, Deputy curator, Shanxi Museum
"Currently, we receive more than 9,000 visitors per day. In mid-August, the number of visits to the museum stood at over 11,000 per day on weekends."

SOUNDBITE 2 (Chinese): GAO SHAN, Visitor
"After entering the museum, we first visited the exhibition themed 'Cradle of Civilization.' My child studies abroad. We come back every summer vacation. I think he should know more about the history. Shanxi has seen over 5,000 years of civilization, so I bring him here this year."

The growing popularity of study tours focusing on traditional culture has also attracted huge crowds to museums, as museum visits usually constitute an integral session of the tour.

In Sanmenxia City of central China's Henan Province, many students visit the Miaodigou museum during the summer vacation.

Located near the Miaodigou archeological site, the museum sheds light on the Yangshao culture dating back 5,000 to 7,000 years along the middle reaches of the Yellow River.

SOUNDBITE 3 (Chinese): GUO JINXUAN, Student, No. 3 Experimental Primary School of Sanmenxia City
"In the museum, we can learn a lot about Chinese history and culture, which is very helpful for our study, and helps us gain a wider vision."

SOUNDBITE 4 (Chinese): LIU YANG, Teacher, No. 3 Experimental Primary School of Sanmenxia City
"It helps increase students' knowledge and broaden their horizons to better understand the cultural history of our hometown."

Xinhua News Agency correspondents reporting from Beijing.
(XHTV)