China’s Holiday Museums and Heritage Boom
Museums, revolutionary heritage sites and intangible-culture experiences drew record crowds across China during the 2026 National Day holiday, with state media framing the trend as a fusion of cultural heritage and patriotic sentiment rather than a purely commercial tourism surge. In a feature published Tuesday, Xinhua News said the holiday demonstrated that culture is the soul of a country and a nation, weaving on-the-ground reporting with quotations from Xi Jinping.
The article, originally carried by People’s Daily under the title Culture Enriches the Ages, Ties to Home and Country, is a seasonal observation piece — a genre in which Chinese state media pairs holiday color reporting with top-down ideological messaging.
Listening to the Artifacts
The first strand of the Xinhua piece focuses on what it calls listening to cultural relics speak. At the Yinxu Museum in Anyang, Henan, evening sessions drew visitors who used a mini-program called The Extraordinary Oracle Bone Script to decode 3,000-year-old inscriptions, the report said.
Across the country, the National Museum of China mounted a 200-plus-item exhibition on the origins of Chinese civilization in Yuncheng; Prince Gong’s Mansion opened a court-art show on Beijing cloisonné technique spanning the Yuan dynasty to the present; and the Liangzhu Museum marked the 90th anniversary of the site’s discovery with 124 cong and cong-style jade objects drawn from 14 provinces and overseas collections.
According to the article, celebrating festivals in museums has settled from a slogan into a new cultural custom — a shift it portrays as evidence of rising cultural confidence rather than simply higher tourism spending.
Listening to History
The second strand turns to revolutionary heritage, coinciding with two year markers the article emphasizes: the 105th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China and the 90th anniversary of the Long March victory.
The report revisits the 1935 assault on Luding Bridge in Sichuan, where 22 commandos crossed 13 iron chains under fire, and notes the Revolutionary Military Museum’s Great Expedition exhibition, which displayed more than 300 newly shown relics and documents.
In Yan’an, a storytelling event on Pagoda Hill and other sites drew crowds. Countless revolutionary forebears gave their lives for today’s peace, said Yu Hanqi, a sophomore from Baicheng, Jilin, in remarks carried by the article. For students of the new era, studying hard is the best way to love and serve the motherland.
At the Red Detachment of Women memorial in Qionghai, Hainan, Ma Shiju — granddaughter of veteran Wang Yunmei — served as a guest guide, recounting how her grandmother taught herself to write her own name to join the Party.
Listening to Culture
The third strand covers intangible cultural heritage and cultural creation. In Jingdezhen, Jiangxi, the first National Day since handcrafted porcelain industry relics were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in July 2026 drew visitors to try kiln-firing themselves. Only after stacking firewood by hand do you understand how hard-won a kiln of porcelain is, said Chen Guorong, a visitor from Shanghai.
In Kaifeng, Henan, an immersive Song-dynasty-themed park offered VR riverboat detective games and 3D dome theater experiences. Elsewhere, visitors practiced underglaze porcelain painting in Liling, rubbed woodblock New Year prints in Tianjin, and made shadow puppets in Taierzhuang.
The scale of the holiday consumption apparatus was significant. During a designated culture-and-tourism consumption month, localities rolled out more than 20,000 cultural-tourism events and issued over 310 million yuan (about $43 million) in consumption coupons and subsidies, per the article. The National Day film slate — with domestic titles dominant — saw total box office including presales surpass 1 billion yuan (about $140 million) as of the evening of October 6.
Culture as Soft Power
The report also frames culture as an instrument of openness. China has implemented unilateral visa-free entry for 50 countries and 240-hour transit visa-free entry for 57 countries. In the first three days of the holiday, inbound foreign visitors at Shanghai Pudong Airport alone reached 43,000, up 23.5% year-on-year, according to the article.
Separately, 21jingji reported that Shanghai’s border inspection authority processed more than 3.16 million inbound foreign passengers in the first half of 2026, a 22% year-on-year rise, with more than 2.046 million entering under visa-free or 240-hour transit-visa-free policies — over 60% of the inbound foreign total. The outlet described Shanghai as China’s first stop for inbound tourism.
The Xinhua piece quotes a Russian visitor, Natalia, from Yekaterinburg, who learned tea-making in Huzhou, Zhejiang, saying she had seen a video online and wanted to come and see China’s human geography.
A Broader Policy Thread
A companion Xinhua commentary republished by People’s Daily tied the holiday trend to the long-running culture-tourism integration policy, quoting Xi’s 2020 guidance at the Yungang Grottoes that tourism development must put protection first and should not become over-commercialized. It also cited his remarks at Lijiang’s old town in March 2025 that the cultural-tourism industry must follow a path of sustainable and healthy development.
What to Watch
Whether the museum-and-heritage boom reflects durable changes in Chinese leisure habits or a holiday-season spike amplified by official promotion remains an open question. Some commentary in Chinese media has questioned the celebratory framing of the holiday film figures, suggesting box-office performance may be contested.
What is clear is the direction of policy: the article is unambiguous in presenting heritage tourism, museum-going and cultural consumption as manifestations of national revival and cultural confidence. A nation with cultural confidence can stand firm, stand steady, and go far, Xi is quoted as saying — a message likely to be reiterated as China continues to court inbound tourists and promote its cultural soft power abroad.