Photo/Dfic

Feb. 19 (NBD) -- The Palace Museum announced on its official website on Sunday that the "Lantern Festival night in the Forbidden City" will be held for two consecutive nights on February 19 and 20.

Upon the announcement, excited visitors swarmed the official website of the Palace Museum to book the tickets, which paralyzed the museum's ticketing system on Monday.

So far, the tickets have been fully booked. A scalped ticket can be sold for as much as 3,000 yuan (443.5 U.S. dollars) on the Internet.

Founded in 1925, the Palace Museum was established on the site of the Forbidden City, the imperial palace of ancient China.

The event is the first time in the Palace Museum's 94-year history that it will be open to the public for free at night, and the first time that the ancient buildings in the Forbidden City will be lit on a large scale at night. Visitors can enjoy the magnificent view of the lit-up Meridian Gate before entering the tower and touring the exhibition "Celebrating Spring Festival in the Forbidden City."

The Palace Museum was lit up on Monday evening for a rehearsal of the rare nighttime public tours.

Photo/Dfic

From TV reality shows to cultural and creative products and to the festival event, the 599-year-old Forbidden City finds a way to draw people's attention and builds itself an online celebrity.

In a previous interview with NBD, the Palace Museum's deputy director Feng Naien said that either the museum's move to go digital or its cultural and creative products display the museum's concentrated research on the youth psychology.

"As long as we don't make factual mistakes and remain respectful for traditional culture, I hope the public can be tolerant of possible errors made by the museum on its way of cultural innovation," Feng noted.

It's noteworthy that the Palace Museum, by exploiting its IP value and developing a series of cultural and creative products, has been witnessing rapid growth in revenue in recent years.

The Palace Museum recorded revenue of 1.5 billion yuan (221.8 million U.S. dollars) from cultural and creative items in 2017, said Shan Jixiang, director of the museum, at Yabuli China Entrepreneurs Forum held on Sunday. The 1.5-billion-yuan revenue makes the museum outperform 1,500 A-share companies, according to China Securities Journal.

Moreover, sales of the Palace Museum's cultural and creative products increased to around 1 billion yuan (147.8 million U.S. dollars) in 2016 from 600 million yuan (88.7 million U.S. dollars) in 2013, according to statistics of a Beijing-based consultancy firm.

Photo/Taobao store of the Palace Museum

The museum opened its first store on Alibaba's Taobao in October 2010, selling peripherals. Now the Palace Museum is selling tapes, notebooks, refrigerator stickers, fans and even cosmetics such as lipsticks, eye shadow and facial masks.

"The only disadvantage of the lipsticks of the Palace Museum is possibly the difficulty to buy them," Shan joked at the Yabuli forum, adding that over 900,000 lipsticks have been sold out and the item is still in strong demand.

Email: gaohan@nbd.com.cn