Take home a bit of history

Tourists visit a souvenir shop in the Palace Museum in Beijing.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Cultural souvenirs from museums are very popular on social media in China, which probably accounts for the boom seen at the Palace Museum.

According to Shan Jixiang, director of the Palace Museum, the sales of its more than 8,700 types of souvenirs surpassed 1 billion yuan ($153 million) in 2015.

Explaining why the museum has such large range of products, Shan says: "What matters to a museum is not how many visitors they have, but how close they are to people's daily lives.

"About 80 percent of souvenirs sold in our stores in the past were not related to our museum," he says. "We wanted to change the situation."

As of now, souvenirs from the Palace Museum cover almost every aspect of life. It recently even introduced costumes for pet dogs.

"Perhaps, we've overdone it a little bit," he says, smiling.

Separately, the total value of sales of souvenirs by 11 key public museums jointly built by the provincial and central authorities in China (with two of them stopping sales due to restoration work) was just 97 million yuan in 2015, according to the State Administration of Cultural Heritage.

Guan Qiang, the deputy director of the cultural heritage administration, says his organization will draft a national rule governing the business operations of museums to enable them to access markets more efficiently.

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