Following the success of Secret Garden, the best-selling coloring book for adults, coloring books and products sales have been booming in China. Even The Assassin Nie Yinniang, a film screened in late August, published a coloring album as a promotion for the film.
Several Chinese museums have jumped on the bandwagon of the trend, publishing graphics to color to persuade the country's social media addicts to put down their phones for a while and return to simpler pleasures.
Let's have a look at the coloring products released by different museums in China.
Journalists from local media in Henan province saw a coloring album edited by the Longmen Grottoes committee on Sunday. According to the administrative committee of the grottoes, it will be published in October.
The album consists of eight pages with beautiful patterns and a brief introduction to each pattern, for example about a queen in the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-557) paying respect to Buddha and a Tang Dynasty (618-907) Bodhisattva.
Yu Ying, director of the administrative committee of the Grottoes, told journalists that most of the statues in the grottoes were originally colored. After more than 1,000 years, the colors have faded.
"We're not just jumping on the bandwagon, or to imitate what other museums do. It is just an example of 'Internet + heritage protection'. We hope to restore the caves in this way, and offer more knowledge of cultural relic protection to the public through such an innovation," Yu said.
"To some degree, the concept of historic relic protection is too esoteric for most visitors. However, by coloring the patterns, they will establish a link with the grottoes and history. That's the most significant part," he added.
In October, a series of three coloring books of the Palace Museum will be released in China. They will feature drawings from architecture, patterns from royal clothing and royal jewelry, as well as patterns of royal supplies. Two of them are currently being typeset.
The book series uses drawings and patterns from the Forbidden City as the basis for the patterns. Some of them are original pattern designs of the Qing Dynasty (1636--1912). Other paintings replicate the patterns on the precious cultural relics by veteran employees of the museum. There are even designs which were drawn by the younger staff members of the museum.
In addition, ancient architecture experts wrote brief introductions to all the patterns in the book to make sure that readers can gain more knowledge from reading, all while enjoying the fun of coloring.
To endorse the new book series, the museum staff members conducted an online popularity test on its official Weibo account from July 19th to mid August. It took only several days before it received more than 6, 000 praises, relays and comments. Around 200 netizens uploaded their colored-in designs.
According to Guo Ting, social media manager of the museum's Weibo account, The Palace Museum thought about publishing colored photos of architecture in the Forbidden City as early as 2008, because they are aesthetically pleasing.
"But our thoughts back then were not as 'fashionable' as the coloring idea today. Since June, with the popularity of the coloring book, our team thought about trying it with patterns found in the museum," Guo added.
From April 16 to May 18, a special exhibition of art works by the Eight Eccentric Painters of Yangzhou was held in Yangzhou Museum. To promote the activity, the museum released a series of 15 coloring cards.
During the exhibition, the museum provided 100 free coloring cards, with a cartoon figure of the Eight Eccentric Painters of Yangzhou on one side and introduction of the figure on the other side. Visitors can also get a special seal as a souvenir on the card in the museum.
Every two days, the museum offers coloring cards with a different character or design. Visitors can buy a whole series at the gift shop in the museum.
According to the museum staff members, the cards soon became children's favorites. Several kids visited the museum twice or even more times, just to collect the different cards. They were also eager to color the character on the cards in a museum-designated area together.
It is a popular belief that coloring books can help people relieve stress and have psychological benefits. Some Internet users claim that they can keep away from their cell phones for a whole afternoon by concentrating on coloring, which not only helps them relax, but also achieve self-improvement.
However, some say that the coloring process makes them more stressed as it is hard for them to choose the right color each time and they are always unsatisfied with their works. Some addicts got sick after spending too much time coloring and a college girl even fell ill after staying up coloring until 2 o'clock in the morning.
Chen Hengda, head of the spiritual growth center at Guangxi Science and Technology Publishing House, says that the drawings from the hit coloring books like Secret Garden are always the illustrators' improvisations, which require high coloring skill, so many people can't feel a sense of achievement and will feel frustrated at their efforts, which can only stress them out more.
Xu Guosheng, an expert from the Chinese academy of Press and Publication, thinks that coloring books cater to the social reading trend, and has a great advantage in social interaction and social media. "The spread of coloring books is a sign which predicts that social publishing and social reading will be a major trend in the future."
