From museums to homes: Making heritage art accessible

If you're a passionate enthusiast of painting and calligraphy, a booth featuring a diverse array of replicated heritage masterpieces such as Along the River during the Qingming Festival and A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains would undoubtedly spark your interest during a tour to the recent book fair held in Beijing's Chaoyang Park.

The book fair offers not only books, but also anything you could imagine about culture and history. For example, a booth selling replicated heritage paintings is one of the eye-catchers.

These replicas are usually priced at several hundred yuan each, which amounts to tens of US dollars, making them quite affordable for the average income earners in China.

The booth was set up by a book store, where a shop assistant nicknamed Weiwei telling a CGTN reporter that the replicated heritage paintings, whose originals are usually housed in museums, vary in length but can be framed as a tool of protection if requested by customers. As she explained this, she demonstrated the length of a scroll of Along the River during the Qingming Festival.

In fact, to bring traditional culture "to life" and make it accessible to ordinary people, many technologists have persisted in creative endeavors based on ancient calligraphy and painting masterpieces housed in museums.  

Among these, Along the River during the Qingming Festival stands out as the most renowned. In this painting, one can clearly identify traces of 14 of the country's 43 intangible cultural heritage items on UNESCO's Representative List, according to the Kaifeng culture and tourism authorities in Henan Province.  

With the continuous improvement of people's cultural literacy and economic income, the introduction of simulation replicas into China’s cultural market is believed by many critics as a means not only for meeting people's consumption demands for highbrow culture but also for promoting the national traditional culture.