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The beautifully designed, richly colored and elegantly printed cultural calender, “Inheritance Calender”, went viral on and off line in China before the New Year.
Apart from the practical function to record time, this innovative calender is illustrated with over 380 pictures featuring China's 24 solar terms, traditional festivals and handcrafts.
According to the producers, a staff of 30 people have devoted more than 300 days to the creation of this work of art, so as to fully display Chinese folk cultures.
“Inheritance Calender” is not the newest crusaders.
Years ago, the Palace Museum in Beijing put on market a calender with its monthly pages featuring themes on a series of famed Chinese relics.
This year, the Palace Museum calender started to sell as early as in August, according to the Beijing Books Building.
Then there is the daily poem reading calender. Selected from the marvelous Chinese literary treasures, each poem is annotated with background, information of the poet and its implied meaning.
These cultural calenders have injected great vitality into the Chinese cultural and creative market, especially when the products are available on e-commerce platforms.
Some of the online stores grasped the business chance, selling over 20,000 copies in just one month.
Stores on Taobao, China's leading online retail platform, even got ideas of making customized calendars to meet the true need or a bit vanity of the customers.
A photo enthusiast has made five customized calenders, spending 1,700 yuan, to show up the best pictures shot by himself.
As more and more people use mobile phones, the calender app seems to replace the real paper one.
However, these cultural calendars may continue to attract people, as they may help people study arts like poems and remind people of the Chinese culture and foregone life.
