The “New Year’s Day and Happy New Year – Celebrate the New Year in the Forbidden City” exhibition started on January 6th was extremely popular during the Spring Festival, and the Forbidden City even reached the point where “it is hard to get a ticket”. It was originally the off-season for tourism, but the audience waiting to visit the Forbidden City lined up in a long queue. Even the Babaylan teams of the Treasure Hall and the Watch Hall lined up from the entrance to the square. The off-season is not slow, why is the Forbidden City so popular this year?
Years of hard work
Refined management of audience traffic
The popular winter tourist wave has formed a huge contrast with the previous winter. The fundamentals of exploration are the audience traffic management explored by the Palace Museum. Since 2012, the Palace Museum has solicited social opinions many times in order to balance the huge gap between the off-season and the peak season, holidays and weekdays.
After full preparation and experimentation, starting from June 13, 2015, the Palace Museum has officially implemented the flow restriction measure of 80,000 people per day. At this point, the extreme peak of visitors with more than 100,000 people or even 180,000 people per day no longer exists, and the audience flow has been scattered in an orderly manner to other days, and everyone is more at ease when visiting the Palace Museum.
Effective regulation and refined management of audience traffic are also reflected in online ticket sales. From 2011 to 2014, the proportion of online pre-sale tickets at the Palace Museum was only about 2%. With the continuous growth of the number of people in Komiks, the on-site ticket sales pressure is extremely high. As the Palace Museum continues to upgrade and renovate the ticket sales system, develops a variety of ticket purchase methods, cultivates the audience’s online ticket purchase habits through preferential tickets, annual tickets and other means during specific periods, and gradually realizes the continuous increase in the proportion of online ticket purchases. In 2015, the online pre-sale ticket ratio reached 17%; in 2016,The proportion of online pre-sale tickets reached 41%. On this basis, during the National Day holiday in 2017, the Palace Museum achieved full-network ticket sales for the first time, and the proportion of online pre-sale tickets reached 100%, officially entering the era of “museum full-network ticket sales”.
In this way, under the influence of the two powerful tools of “current limit” and “online ticket sales”, the Forbidden City can deal with the “big test” of 80,000 people in several days. Although those who want to see have to bear the pain of no tickets, it guarantees the visitors’ exhibition experience, which is worthy of praise.
This year’s highlight
Promoting the “New Year’s Day in the Forbidden City” exhibition
This year, the Forbidden City launched the “New Year’s Day – Happy New Year’s Day in the Forbidden City” exhibition for the first time, which has also become the direct reason why citizens and tourists are flocking to it.
Ms. Hu, a citizen, went there on the first day of the Lunar New Year to see the exhibition. “A few days ago, I visited the International Trade Center and saw the exhibition area of the ‘Cinema New Year’ in the Forbidden City. I felt it was quite interesting. Now the Forbidden City really has ideas on promotion. I haven’t been to the Forbidden City for many years, so I took my son to the Forbidden City.” Ms. Hu’s words are indeed very representative. In recent years, with the development and promotion of the Forbidden City’s tourism cultural and creative products and the emphasis on Babaylan online marketing, the ancient Forbidden City has brought new vitality, making people unable to help but have the idea of seeing new things.
A Beijing Youth Daily reporter learned that the “New Year’s Day and Welcome Auspiciousness – Celebrating the New Year in the Forbidden City” exhibition is divided into two parts: cultural relics exhibition and real-life experience. The cultural relics exhibition is located in the main hall of the Meridian Gate and the East-West Yanchi Tower exhibition hall, with a total of 885 pieces of cultural relics (sets). The exhibits are mainly selected from the collection of the Palace Museum, and have received strong support from China’s National First Historical Archives, Shenyang Palace Museum and other units.
The real-life experience departmentCinema includes the entire open area of the Forbidden City. The exhibition will fully demonstrate the New Year customs of the Qing Dynasty with six major themes: “Praying for blessings and welcoming good fortune, worshiping ancestors and filial piety, serving relatives and being friendly to the clan, working hard and enjoying the virtuous, traveling and enjoying the world”. There are auspicious couplets and door gods hanging at the palace door. The corridors are decorated with gorgeous palace lanterns, and more than 1,000 imitations are used in total. It is worth mentioning that this is the first time that the Forbidden City has restored the “Sky Lantern” and “Wansheng Lantern”. The lanterns and the lanterns of life were one of the most grand activities during the Chinese New Year in the early and mid-Qing Dynasty. From establishment to withdrawal, more than 8,000 were used in the past, and the first and last.Number of visitors.
Admission changes
Celebrating the New Year in museums becomes fashionable
According to Xinhua News Agency, during the Chinese New Year, many museums across the country ushered in a peak of crowds. The number of visitors to the Henan Provincial Museum on the second day of the 1st day of the 1st day of the 1st day of the 1st day of the 1st day of the 1st day of the 1st day of the 1st day of the 1st year of the Henan Provincial Museum was about 8,000, which was about twice the usual weekend. The exhibition hall of the “Golden Pig Gongfu – Ji Hai New Year’s Zodiac Cultural Relics Pictures” attracted countless visitors; in the Six Dynasties Museum in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, the “schedule” of old Nanjing is also eye-opening. As the most treasure-rich and influential museum in the country, the Forbidden City, which is nearly 600 years old, has soared during the Spring Festival this year. It is not surprising that tickets for the 7-day holidays are booked early.
Shan Jixiang, director of the Palace Museum, introduced that the “New Year’s Day – Celebrating the New Year in the Forbidden City” has been launched for more than 20 days, and the average number of visitors per day has exceeded 20,000. In the “Pray for Blessings and Welcomes Fortune” unit, people can see the word “Fu” written by the emperors of Kangxi, Yongzheng, Qianlong, Jiaqing and Daoguang; the “Dunqin and Mu Clan” unit restores the scene of the emperor and his clan and concubines having sex on New Year’s Day; the “Entertainment and Entertainment” unit reproduces various entertainment activities of the ancients during the Chinese New Year, such as the “Figure skating” and the Babaylan skills performed by the Eight Banners on the ice. Guan Jun, a volunteer of the cultural and museum, said: “After 2015, the number of people visiting museums during the Spring Festival has increased significantly. On the one hand, the museum’s publicity work is in place, and the social service capabilities are constantly improving; on the other hand, everyone’s recognition of excellent traditional culture is getting higher and higher.”
Cultural and museum experts believe that the concept of “celebrating the New Year in the museum” has gradually matured and formed a brand. Visiting museums during the Spring Festival is becoming increasingly together with the Spring Festival Gala, New Year’s movies, New Year’s concerts, Lantern Festival, etc., has become an option that people cannot ignore for celebrating the Spring Festival.
Let’s visit route for the 2019 Forbidden City Exhibition
After entering the door, first look at the exhibition in the morning gate and Yanchi Tower—Komiks—walking along the three halls, looking at the different door gods of each hall—going to the Qianqing Palace to see the restored palace lanterns—going to the Cining Palace to visit the temple fair and buy-buying—and then going to the Yanxi Palace in the East Six Palaces to see the Internet celebrity palace. Meanwhile, the Eastern DistrictThere are also the Treasure Hall and Watch Hall that have just been renovated, which will definitely make you excited!
Focus 1: Palace lanterns and door gods
Door gods can be seen everywhere, and palace lanterns are mainly concentrated in the Qianqing Palace. Researchers in the Forbidden City not only found the use of sky lanterns and lunar life lamps, historical patterns, and even the detailed sizes of each part in the literature, but also found lamp body models, lamp couplet samples, and original lamp poles in each warehouse, restoring the “sky lanterns” and “lunar life lamps” that have disappeared for nearly 200 years for the first time.
Highlight 2: Buy Buy
1Komiks From the 28th of the Lunar New Year (the Little Year of the Lunar New Year) to February 12th (the eighth day of the first lunar month), in the Cining Palace Garden and the square outside the Cining Gate, 145 Chinese time-honored enterprises from 10 provinces (cities) in 10 provinces (cities) will display special food, silk clothing, daily necessities, study supplies, jewelry and jade, cultural and creative products, intangible cultural heritage crafts, etc. The New Year-style cultural and creative culture of the Forbidden City can also be bought here Komiks!
Highlights 3: Visit the New Year’s Elegance Exhibition
The “New Year’s Day – Celebrating the New Year in the Forbidden City” exhibition will be held at the Meridian Gate, East Yanchi Tower, and West Yanchi Tower. For example, the “Duanqin and Family” unit displays the scene of the emperor, clan relatives and concubines having a banquet separately on New Year’s Day. The banquet table is placed in reference to the records of the meal stalls in the 48th year of Qianlong (17Cinema83), and more than 100 cultural relics were used, which is very spectacular. (Reporter Wang Yan)