During this year's Spring Festival holiday, reservation numbers for cultural and museum venues in Luzhou continued to rise sharply. Museums and historic districts were packed with visitors, and popular experiential sessions sold out well in advance, making the 'museum boom' a new trend in local cultural tourism.

Brilliant Splendor: Digital Interactive Art Exhibition of Artifacts from the Sanxingdui and Jinsha Sites

Why are more people choosing to 'celebrate the New Year in museums'? Reporters recently visited several cultural and museum venues in Luzhou to explore the reasons behind this phenomenon.

More Venues

Building a Diverse Matrix to Enrich Cultural Offerings

"The on-site experience far exceeded my expectations." said Cao Shunan, a tourist from Henan, after visiting the Luzhou County Song Dynasty Stone Carving Museum. The museum's immersive theatrical performance. "A Magical Journey Through the Stone Realm" launched during the Spring Festival, became one of Luzhou's most popular attractions.

The "Stone Realm Odyssey" exhibition at the Luxian Song Dynasty Stone Carving Museum

This 'museum boom' is underpinned by the city's flourishing network of cultural venues. As a nationally recognized Historical and Cultural City, Luzhou boasts 22 National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units—the second highest number in the province. In 2024, the Luzhou Museum was elevated to National Class-A status, making Luzhou the second city in the province where all three major comprehensive cultural institutions have achieved this top-tier designation. In recent years, the city has built a diversified cultural matrix encompassing specialized museums, historic districts, and industrial heritage sites, such as Yaoba Ancient Town and the Luzhou Laojiao cellar cluster.

Leveraging this matrix, Luzhou hosted the inaugural National Conference on Cultural Relics Protection and Utilization and the Second National Skills Competition for Cultural Relics Professionals. In 2025, the city will introduce the exhibition "Silver Banquet: Austrian Silverware from Schloss Schwarzenau", featuring 94 silver artifacts transported across continents. The province's first showing of the digital interactive art exhibition "Brilliant Splendor: Artifacts from the Sanxingdui and Jinsha Sites" attracted over 300,000 visitors. Additionally, projects like "Old Luzhou · Dahe Street" were selected among Sichuan Province's first batch of outstanding cultural relics utilization initiatives in 2025, demonstrating significant success in revitalizing heritage.

More Immersive Experiences

Stone Carvings 'Speak,' Audiences 'Step Into the Scene'

On the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, resident Cao Yaling felt as if she had traveled back to the Song Dynasty while visiting the Luzhou County Song Dynasty Stone Carving Museum—dining in a wine shop, sharing a drink with 'Su Dongpo', and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a 'city defense general.' "These cold artifacts now have warmth", she remarked.

Cultural and creative products from Luzhou Museum

"A Magical Journey Through the Stone Realm" draws inspiration from the museum's stone carvings, using live performances to recreate scenes such as Southern Song-era taverns and battlefields of Shenbi City, transforming static relics into vivid stories. "We want these carvings to 'speak" said Deputy Director Luo Yulan, explaining that the event combines 'immersive theater with cultural experiences' and meticulously recreates details like Song banquet customs and ancient rituals, offering visitors tactile and participatory engagement.

Meanwhile, Yaoba Ancient Town in Hejiang County launched Tang Dynasty-themed interactive activities, where tourists use 'pass tickets' to role-play with Tang-style NPCs. At the Qu Family Manor Museum, performances of Sichuan opera face-changing and magic turned the century-old manor into a dynamic stage. "Watching face-changing right in front of the ancient opera house really amps up the atmosphere", said tourist Zhu Guizhu.

Such immersive experiences break the boundaries of traditional exhibitions, bringing static relics to life and becoming a key attraction of the 'museum tourism' trend.

Deeper Integration

Distinctive Cultural Products Drive Revenue, Cross-sector Collaborations Capture Attention

Luzhou is promoting cultural transformation through integration, forging new pathways for cultural tourism consumption. In 2025, the Luzhou Museum launched the upgraded "Linlin Jiu 2.0" cultural product line and a WeChat emoji pack, generating nearly one million yuan in annual revenue from cultural merchandise. The "Brilliant Splendor" exhibition simultaneously sold items like Sun Bird fridge magnets and offered VR explorations and study camps, earning over 400,000 yuan.

During the Spring Festival, Luzhou implemented its "Jiucheng Nine Benefits" policy, which included free guided tours at seven museums and the distribution of one million yuan in cultural tourism consumption vouchers, effectively stimulating spending.

Looking ahead, Luzhou is building a "Museum City with Distinctive Jiucheng Charm" and developing an "One Core, Multiple Dimensions" ecosystem: positioning the China Liquor Museum as the leading 'core' institution, aiming for both National Class-A status and a AAAA-rated tourist attraction; leveraging the Luzhou Museum's recent upgrade to implement a 'big-leading-small' strategy to cultivate specialized and micro-museums focused on local industries, such as Xianshi Soy Sauce and Fenshui Oil-paper Umbrellas. According to Li Ling, Director of the Municipal Cultural Relics Bureau, Luzhou is actively pursuing the hosting of Egyptian and Middle Eastern cultural relics exhibitions and bidding to host the 2027 International Museum Day main event in China and the 12th China Museums Expo in 2028.

【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.】