Why do Chinese people love visiting museums?

Museums across China received more than 1.1 billion visitors in 2019, an increase of 9.9 percent over the previous year, according to recent data released by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Why do Chinese people have such a great interest in visiting museums? The main reasons can be divided into three aspects.

First of all, most museums are open to the public free of charge. "The local governments hope that citizens will gradually develop the habit of visiting museums after experiencing better products and services, and will enjoy visiting these places," said Zheng Yi, curator for the museum of Fudan University.

Museums can improve their services through the daily contact of visitors. In addition to permanent exhibitions, many museums also strive to explore ways to introduce more ad hoc exhibitions specifically catering to meet people's needs for cultural diversity.

Second, museums work to introduce exhibitions of different characteristics. For instance, there are exhibitions on the cultural characteristics of ethnic minorities, the development of the media industry and exhibitions focusing on screen painting, a traditional Chinese art.

In recent years, as there are more and more high-quality exhibitions with rich and colorful content, a rising number of young people are attracted by the museums.

Last but not least, more museums can now be visited online thanks to the empowerment of technologies.

Moving museums to the "cloud" and digitizing collections have become the developing trend of museums everywhere in recent years.

This year, the outbreak of COVID-19 has spurred the digitization process of museums, with online exhibitions being a major product for museums to provide public cultural services.