On October 17, the 23rd “Fun with Huaihua Museum · Intangible Cultural Heritage Autumn Harvesting” intangible cultural heritage handicraft flea market kicked off at Huaihua Museum. The scale of this market reached a new high, with 48 booths and 20 immersive experience programs. It also innovatively launched a  real-scene interactive “Huaihua Museum Treasure-Hunting” project, turning the museum into an offline game venue, encouraging citizens to shift from passive exhibition viewing to active exploration of cultural and museum spaces, with a view to creating a cultural and museum activity scenario integrating exhibition viewing, recreation, hands-on experience and consumption.

This market brought together local intangible cultural heritage inheritors, cultural-creative teams from universities, and artisans. Breaking away from the traditional stall-selling model, it created a composite cultural and museum consumption scene that is viewable, playable, interactive, and tasteable. Classic experience programs such as rubbings, paper-cutting, ceramic hand-making, and Song-dynasty tea whisking continued to appear; several new stallholders made their debut, including velvet flower craftsmanship, Song brocade handcrafts, dough figurine making, and sugar painting. Intangible cultural heritage handmade works and local specialty foods, such as Miao-style ornament potato DIY, Poria cake, and Longxing crisp candy, were also exhibited together, allowing traditional craftsmanship and the lively atmosphere of everyday market life to blend with each other.

The newly launched “Huaihua Museum Treasure-Hunting” project requires no drills for quizzes or question drills. Citizens can pick up a clue task slip at the first-floor service desk, follow the hints to go across exhibition halls, corridors, and the cultural-creative shop, and look for the corresponding cultural relics and booth spots. After completing the check-in verification, they can redeem free experience vouchers. The project with low requirements for participation in cultural and museum activities has been welcomed by family visitors and young people. Within just over an hour after the activity began, all 125 experience vouchers were distributed.

The parent-child blended incense pendant workshop held alongside the market also received positive reviews, with a total of 22 parent-child families with children aged 8 and above signing up to participate. The tasks were divided among parents and childre, and then, they worked together—kneading the incense paste, pressing it into carved molds, trimming the edges, and piercing holes—to handmade wearable blended incense pendants. The pendants naturally release fragrance at body or room temperature and can either be worn or placed at home. All the participants took home this autumn handmade gift.

This activity combined market trading, exhibition hall tours, real-scene games, and parent-child cultural education, breaking the stereotype that a market is merely about setting up stalls and shopping. Without leaving the city, citizens could enjoy a one-stop experience of viewing cultural relics, trying intangible cultural heritage activities, and relaxing with their children, getting an up-close feel of the lively, down-to-earth atmosphere of autumn cultural and museum activities.

(Translated by Yang Sigui)