On the occasion of the Palace Museum's centennial anniversary, the pop-up event "Read the Forbidden City" made its debut in Chengdu on December 26 under the theme "Good Fortune Is Coming Right Away," offering residents and visitors an immersive cultural experience.

Flash Mob Scene

Rooted in the museum's vast collection of over 1.86 million artifacts and its rich publishing heritage, the initiative has previously been held in Beijing, Tianjin, Shenzhen, and other cities. Its arrival in Chengdu aims to integrate Palace Museum culture into the urban fabric through diverse formats.

The highlight of the event is the "Palace Museum Calendar" hailed as "China's most beautiful calendar". According to the project lead, since its relaunch—modeled after the 1937 edition—the calendar has been published annually for 17 consecutive years, with cumulative sales exceeding 9 million copies. Each page features a carefully selected artifact from the Palace Museum's collection, meticulously curated and refined by experts to gently unfold a millennium of history, one day at a time.

Within the pop-up zone, four distinct series of the "Palace Museum Calendar" are displayed under soft lighting: the Zodiac Edition pairs each day with a corresponding artifact to weave a miniature historical narrative; the Painting & Calligraphy Edition is accompanied by a bespoke fragrance, and scanning a QR code allows visitors to "step into" classical paintings via AR technology; the Youth Edition features a compact design that unlocks traditional stories with a swipe of the finger; and the Chinese-English Bilingual Edition builds a bridge for Eastern aesthetics to reach global audiences through precise translation.

Multiple editions of the 'Palace Museum Calendar

Around the corner, an interactive stamping station reveals thoughtful details. The stamp designs draw inspiration from iconic Palace Museum elements: the "Imperial Steed" features fluid lines, the "Imperial Seal" bears solemn seal-script characters, and a pattern replicating the grandeur of the "Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains" scroll pays homage to this masterpiece. A Chengdu-exclusive stamp blends Sichuan regional motifs with Palace Museum patterns.

Deep within the pop-up area lies an immersive reading space, where bookshelves harmonize with scenographic displays. Open Palace Museum publications are accented with replica artifact ornaments, creating an atmosphere where the scent of ink mingles with cultural ambiance, inviting visitors to linger. In the cultural exhibition zone, creative products such as the "Palace Museum Blessing Box" and a refrigerator magnet modeled after the Jin'ou Yonggu Cup reinterpret traditional patterns through contemporary design, allowing millennia-old aesthetics to be held in hand and carried daily.

The "Joyful Reading the Forbidden City" series

The event organizer stated that they hope Palace Museum culture will no longer remain a distant spectacle but become an everyday encounter during casual strolls through the city. Moving forward, they plan to continue collaborating with urban public spaces, using "cultural pop-ups" to spark dialogues between tradition and modernity, enabling this ancient cultural legacy to permeate Chengdu’s vibrant daily life in a lively, accessible manner—and subtly convey the charm of traditional Chinese culture.

【本文部分内容由AI辅助生成，特此声明。The author(s) generated part of the content in this work with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI), which is hereby declared.】