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Museum Craze Involves More Teenagers

More museums are here waiting for you! China’s capital, Beijing, is going to open another batch (一批) of museums this year. The building of a new branch of the Palace Museum, one of the world’s most visited tourist attractions, kicked off as well.

As the museum craze has grown stronger in the past few years, teenagers in China have become more involved in exploring museums, where they can immerse (沉浸) themselves in modern technology as well as culture from the past. According to Educator magazine, visits by teenagers to museums each year increased from 220 million to 290 million in the past 5 years. Among the increasing numbers of museum visitors, many of them were teenagers accompanied by their families, reported Guangming Daily earlier this month.

To draw younger visitors, many museums are creating more offline activities for the purpose of spreading Chinese culture. They include artifact making, night visits, secret adventures, treasure evaluation, and some interesting courses. At the China Hangzhou Arts & Crafts Museum, for example, teenagers gathered around to make paper umbrellas during the Spring Festival holiday. With white gloves on and little spades in their hands, visitors in Henan province got to experience the daily work of archaeologists (考古学家). Apart from the activities, some museums even open branches especially designed for teenagers. A hall called Popular Agricultural Science for Young Visitors is a special branch launched by China Agricultural Museum. It is an exhibition hall that combines both visual and audio technology to involve teenagers in agriculture. Besides these offline approaches, a number of museums have also created official websites for teenagers, the Palace Museum in particular. Online visitors may go on an exciting adventure on the website in the style of a comic book.