Spring Festival Cultural Tourism Booms, Traditional Customs Warm Hearts

During the Spring Festival, a joyous atmosphere permeates China, with traditional customs becoming the most popular core element in the tourism market. During this Spring Festival holiday, tourist arrivals surged in historical ancient capitals such as Luoyang, Xi'an and Nanjing, as well as in characteristic ancient cities and niche destinations. "Traveling during the Spring Festival" has become a new trend, allowing people to feel the festive atmosphere through travel and inherit cultural heritage through experience.

Nowadays, traditional customs and Chinese-style trends are increasingly favored by young people, who are more likely to spend the Spring Festival traveling to explore folk customs in different regions. Relevant data shows that two weeks before the end of the Spring Festival holiday, the search popularity of keywords such as "Spring Festival atmosphere" on tourism platforms increased by 358% month-on-month. Cities including Shantou, Fuzhou, Chaozhou, Taiyuan, Xi'an and Guangzhou ranked among the top "characteristic Spring Festival tourism" destinations, becoming popular choices for tourists to feel the festive spirit.

Traditional temple fairs are the most vivid carriers of Spring Festival atmosphere and highlights of the cultural tourism market everywhere. In Beijing, at the lively temple fairs, Peking Opera drum music echoes melodiously, traditional crafts such as dough figurines and sugar blowing are displayed in turn, and various Beijing-style snacks emit a tempting fragrance, allowing tourists to experience authentic customs in laughter. In Xun County, Hebi, Henan, the thousand-year-old traditional temple fair is extremely popular, with crowded streets. Folk performances such as stilt walking, dry boat and bamboo horse are accompanied by roaring gongs and drums. Local specialties like Xun County Eight Great Bowls and stone buns are highly favored, attracting tourists from all over the country to experience the charm of traditional culture immersively.

"Celebrating the New Year in museums" has become a new trend in Spring Festival cultural tourism. Cultural and museum venues in Zhejiang, Liaoning, Ningxia and other places have launched hundreds of themed exhibitions and experience activities, with the Year of the Horse zodiac culture as the most eye-catching element. At Gansu Provincial Museum, the special exhibition of Bronze Galloping Horse is well-received. In the cultural and creative area, "Green Horse" cultural and creative products have put on new limited-edition outfits for the Year of the Horse, triggering a buying spree. At the stamp collection desk, children scramble to collect limited-edition stamps such as "Blessings on the Horse", making national treasure culture enter people's lives in a vivid and interesting way, realizing the two-way empowerment of cultural inheritance and leisure experience.

Bright lanterns light up the Spring Festival night sky. During the Spring Festival, lantern fairs across the country are brilliant and creative, serving as an important carrier to enhance the festive atmosphere. At the 32nd Zigong International Dinosaur Lantern Festival in Sichuan, the 18-meter-high and 180-meter-long "Legend of Mulan" lantern group made a stunning appearance. The golden-armored Mulan statue and the lifelike white horse beside her are impressive. Lantern works made of innovative materials such as glass medicine bottles and blue and white porcelain amaze the audience. In Zhouzhuang, Jiangsu, lanterns adorn the water lanes, showing the gentle romance of Jiangnan water town culture in the sound of oars and lantern light. In Huizhou Ancient City, Anhui, fish lanterns illuminate the village, carrying thousands of years of homesickness and folk memories.

The integration of technology and tradition has injected new vitality into lantern fairs. During the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first lunar month, lantern fairs in Liaoning upgraded their gameplay. In Benxi Lake Industrial Heritage Park, 32 large-scale lanterns were lit simultaneously, integrating traditional lanterns with industrial tourism to show unique charm. At Changzhou Lantern Festival in Jiangsu, an AI-driven dinosaur interactive lantern group can chat with tourists and act as a "tour guide" to introduce lantern fair information and local culture. Shanghai Yuyuan Lantern Festival broke geographical boundaries, connecting a light narrative belt from history to modernity, perfectly integrating traditional culture with modernity and bringing new experiences to tourists.

As the second "intangible cultural heritage (ICH) version of Chinese New Year" since the Spring Festival was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, ICH experiences have become a highlight of the Spring Festival tourism market, with the experience model shifting from "check-in" to "immersion". In Chaozhou, Guangdong, Yingge dance teams shuttle through the streets with vigorous dances, and the joyful sound of gongs and drums ignites the scene. In Kaifeng, Henan, Tianjin and other places, traditional New Year painting skills have driven the upsurge of ancient town tourism. Tourists enter New Year painting workshops to experience woodblock coloring by hand. Innovative works such as Year of the Horse New Year painting night lights are deeply loved, allowing people to feel the charm of ICH through practice.

During the Spring Festival, inbound tourism also picked up, with the Chinese Spring Festival attracting global attention with its unique cultural charm. Relevant data shows that inbound tourism air ticket orders increased nearly 10 times year-on-year during the Spring Festival holiday. Foreign tourists' destinations are no longer limited to hub cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen; more people go into counties and villages to experience Chinese life and traditional culture in depth. Learning paper-cutting, making fish lanterns, watching Yingge dance and iron flower performances, a variety of ICH experiences have won numerous fans, allowing foreign tourists to fully feel the festive atmosphere and cultural heritage of the Chinese Spring Festival.

From traditional temple fairs to museum experiences, from bright lanterns to ICH interactions, the cultural tourism market boomed with profound connotations during this Spring Festival. Traveling during the Spring Festival not only enriches people's holiday life, but also serves as an important carrier to inherit excellent traditional Chinese culture and convey reunion and joy. Today, the Chinese Spring Festival is increasingly becoming an international cultural event, conveying Chinese warmth to the world through tourism and serving as a vivid window for the world to understand China.