NFTs featuring Chinese culture heat up as Chinese Lunar New Year nears

Many Chinese technology and Internet companies are launching non-fungible tokens (NFTs) associated with traditional Chinese culture these days as the Chinese Lunar New Year draws near, igniting Chinese buyers’ enthusiasm.

Photo shows NFTs featuring the warriors on the Xi’an City Wall. (Photo/Xi’an City Wall scenic spot)

A total of 24 museums have launched 3D digital collectibles or will join the bandwagon before the Chinese Lunar New Year on the Jingtan app developed by Alibaba's fintech affiliate Ant Group. Besides, a total of 36 NFTs of museum collection items and one item themed on China’s aerospace industry have been and will be launched on the platform between Jan. 19 and Jan. 31, which falls on Chinese New Year's eve. China’s tech giant Baidu has launched and will continue launching special edition collector NFTs.

Digital collectibles from Henan Museum in Zhengzhou, capital of central China's Henan Province, the Nanjing Museum Administration in Nanjing, east China's Jiangsu Province, and the Hunan Museum in Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan Province will feature different cultural relics related to the tiger, in this way welcoming the Year of the Tiger. These collectibles are available for purchase on the Jingtan platform. Buyers can also obtain these collectibles by collecting five different virtual cards of the Chinese character “Fu” on Alibaba’s Alipay app.

The burgeoning market for NFTs has triggered a shopping spree. A total of 10,000 copies of a NFT featuring a green jade vase from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) with a bird pattern on it were sold out immediately after being made available on Ant Group’s Jingtan platform on Jan. 25. Baidu, which initiated plans to launch one item from a NFT series every day from Jan. 22 to Jan. 31, has also attracted many participants.

There are some key factors driving the recent digital collectibles craze. According to Su Xiaorui, a senior analyst with Beijing-based market research consultancy Analysys, the NFTs are the brainchild of their creator, and are therefore worth collecting. In addition, NFTs are unique cryptographic tokens that exist on a blockchain and cannot be replicated. The shift towards the Metaverse has also somehow fueled the craze, too.

The NFT industry continued to expand rapidly in 2021, with both Internet and traditional companies venturing into this newfangled area. Some large companies, such as Chinese tech giants Ant Group and Tencent, have launched their own platforms, while other players in the field such as Baidu, tech company Xiaomi, e-commerce giant JD.com, and ByteDance, the parent company of the popular video platform TikTok, have also launched their own digital collectibles.