Palace Museum to hold public nighttime events for Lantern Festival

Later, in the Gate of Divine Might area, visitors can see paintings such as "A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains" projected on the roof of the building.

As the Beijing Daily said, the idea of allowing night visits has been around for a long time. Curator Shan Jixiang has noted that two cultural streets will be constructed outside the Gate of Divine Might of the Palace Museum, with fine cultural creative products, and the Gate of Divine Might area will be open to visitors at night.

But the Palace Museum cultural street has not yet been completed, and the night visit plan has been delayed as well.

In recent years, the Palace Museum has been one of the most "fashionable" ancient cultural relics sites in Beijing and even the whole country. From 2012 to 2018, the area open to the public within the Forbidden City increased from 30 percent to 80 percent, with more and more courtyards, exhibitions and cultural relics "meeting" the public.

And the "night fair" in the Lantern Festival is also a creative attempt by the museum. The Palace Museum hopes to display the profound connotation of excellent traditional culture at multiple levels through exhibitions and other ways, to display and interpret traditional culture in a way that is popular with people, and to interact with the audience.

Since its launch on January 8, the exhibition, "Celebrating the Spring Festival in the Forbidden City," has further aroused public interest. The number of visitors to the Palace Museum has increased by more than 70 percent year on year, Beijing Daily said.