Royal food from the Forbidden City is now available for purchase at Tmall, a major Chinese online marketplace, as a part of new steps for the Palace Museum to develop its cultural creative products.
Royal food from the Forbidden City is now available for purchase at Tmall, a major Chinese online marketplace, as a part of new steps for the Palace Museum to develop its cultural creative products.
The Palace Museum says that sales have been robust for Forbidden City themed merchandise. Photo: Dickson Lee
A food tasting event was held at the Baoyun Building in the Palace Museum on Sunday. During the event, the museum announced that its flagship food store “Regard from the Emperor” is officially available online at Tmall, and a series of food made according to ancient recipes during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) are now on sale.
Palace Museum’s Tmall shop Photo:Taobao
They included Cixi’s favourite black sugar ginger tea concoction and sticky date pancakes, handmade by a few select Beijing bakeries that were rumoured to have fed the gourmet-obsessed Chinese monarchs centuries ago.
“There are loads of thrilling royal recipes at the Forbidden City,”said Yuan Hongqi, a researcher at the Palace Museum.
“We want to find good platforms to make them only a few clicks away from consumers, and turn them into revenues.”
Until recently, the Palace Museum had peddled mainly wearisome books and overpriced postcards at its poorly illuminated gift shops, making it and other Chinese peers latecomers to the thriving merchandising business that global museums have enjoyed for decades.
Shoppers can shop for Palace Museum merchandise such as iPhone cases with patterns of imperial court dress. Photo: Taobao
Shan Jixiang, director of the Beijing institution, said last year they had “borrowed a lot of ideas from” the National Palace Museum in Taipei.
As early as the 2000s, mouse pads featuring masterpieces of Chinese paintings were among the best-sellers at the Taipei landmark. Postage stamps and replicas of the museum’s most prized collections have been on sale since the 1980s.
“We have rolled out Forbidden City themed power banks, soap containers, sticky notes, and chopsticks,” Shan said. “Revenue growth has been robust.”
Photo:Taobao
All profits will be pumped back to the Palace Museum, which is in the midst of a costly renovation scheduled to last through 2020 to reinstate its imperial-era appearance.
It is all these that have sparked a craze among millennial Chinese for products tied to where the imperial tales constantly took place – the Forbidden City.
The enormous palace complex was home to 24 Ming and Qing dynasty emperors and their households before the country’s dynastic system was overthrown by the Republic in 1911.
Much of the Palace Museum’s merchandise revolves around Yongzheng and Qianlong, the two enthralling Qing emperors whose romances with their concubines of various ranks have inspired myriads of novels, dramas and films.
Photo: Taobao
At the Forbidden City, shoppers can purchase teapots shaped as Qianlong, or iPhone cases featuring patterns of the imperial court dress supposedly worn by Yongzheng.
