Celebrating traditional craftsmanship through fashion and performance

The show was structured around the four seasons, with each season featuring a different heritage category: tea cultivation and a tea-brewing ceremony for spring, porcelain-making for summer, fabric-dyeing techniques for autumn, and lantern performances for the New Year celebrations in winter. Calligraphy, seal engraving and poetry were integrated into the dancing and singing, alongside presentations of dozens of cultural heritage practices, such as celadon firing and paper-cutting.

The performance reached its climax when performers paraded a colorful, vivid "bench dragon", re-creating a community tradition from Xuzhai village, Dongyang, Zhejiang province. Each household keeps a bench decorated with a lantern resembling a dragon's section. During New Year celebrations, residents bring out the benches, connect them to form a lantern dragon, and parade it through the village.

Wei Pengju, a professor at the Central University of Finance and Economics, says the transmission of cultural heritage needs new models, platforms and settings. "The show is creative and emotionally appealing, while also enabling young people to become involved."

Jin Enxi, 10, from Beijing, has volunteered as a tour guide at the museum for some time. She joined the performance after 10 days of training. "I gained friendship, confidence and perseverance, and I also felt more deeply the power of cultural heritage."

Wang says another round of performances is being planned, with new content and different performers, conveying the spirit of craftsmanship, the aesthetics of everyday life, and devotion to family and country.

After the show, the museum launched a study tour service covering five cultural heritage-themed routes. Destinations include Mount Wuyi in Fujian province, which has a long history of tea cultivation, and Chengdu in Sichuan province, where the time-honored Shu embroidery continues to thrive.