A Study of Sanxingdui Museum’s Building of International Communication Capacity

Zhou Lijuan

Sichuan Museum

Abstract: Museums’ building of international communication capacity has become a hot topic in museology. Featuring unique resources of ancient Shu culture,Sanxingdui Museum is of great value in international communication.This paper first reviews previous studies in this area, then analyzes the efforts made by present-day museums in China and abroad to raise their international profile, and later probes into the current status of Sanxingdui Museum’s building of international communication capacity. On this basis, this paper summarizes the countermeasures Sanxingdui Museum took and proposes suggestions regarding the building of its international communication capacity. Sanxingdui Museum should work harder to improve its overseas exhibitions, protect and study its cultural relics,advance the application for World Heritage status, and promote the Sanxingdui brand via multimedia.

Keywords: Sanxingdui Museum, international communication, cultural influence,exchanges and mutual learning

Introduction

Cultural relics are invested with a civilization’s glorious history, culture, and national ethos. As a valuable heritage left to us by our ancestors, Chinese cultural relics continue to nourish our socialist cultural and ethical progress. In the Chinese context of international communication, economic growth and cultural exports are two eternal themes,which means we should continue to increase the international presence of traditional Chinese culture while ensuring steady economic growth (Li, 2017). Museums are important spaces for the live display of cultural relics and the representational dissemination of Chinese culture.They serve multiple functions, ranging from social education, academic research, protection and promotion of cultural relics, and the display of humanity’s tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC)in 2012, museums in China have continued to grow and flourish. At present, China has 5,788 museums, of which nearly 90 percent are open to the public for free, and there is open information on 3.46 million pieces/sets of cultural relics in the collections. As museums have a range of key functions, including the display, interpretation, and study of cultural relics,their protection and restoration, as well as creative use and branding, they play an essential role in the increasingly frequent cultural exchanges and communication between China and the rest of the world (Li, 2021). The fine traditional Chinese culture and the image of China are impressing the world through influential museum exhibitions and effective international communication. Heritage diplomacy has become another highlight after economic and political diplomacy for China.

Since the 18th National Congress of the CPC in 2012, China has made significant progress in the cultural heritage sector, particularly in protecting,managing, and utilizing cultural relics. Museums in China are working hard to improve the means of transformation, enhance platform construction, enrich talent pools, and improve relevant institutional mechanisms. By implementing major projects, Chinese museums can take the opportunity to improve their capacities for technological innovation and support cultural relics. They also rely on service innovations to better integrate cultural relics into public life and serve the people. At the same time, they actively expand platforms for cultural exchanges with overseas museums and boost the international communication of Chinese culture via multiple channels.

Figure 1 Bronze Human Head Wearing a Gold Mask exhibited at Sanxingdui Museum

Sanxingdui Museum is unique among museums in China, and even the world, due to its collection of oddly-shaped, never-beforeseen artifacts. Given that, we should help increase the influence of the Sanxingdui culture and the ancient Shu culture by further exploring the historical connotations of cultural relics in Sanxingdui Museum, properly protecting and utilizing these cultural relics, and creatively applying them in multiple dimensions. It is the historical mission of museum professionals in the new era to amplify the voices of Chinese archaeology on the international stage.

Literature Review

Chinese museums promote cultural exchanges and cooperation between China and the rest of the world and create an opportunity for people in China and abroad to approach traditional Chinese culture and its contemporary transformation. To some extent, a museum’s international influence can offer a glimpse of current cultural and archaeological progress and communication. A review of literature on museums shows that relevant studies mainly focus on cultural relics’ historical value, educational implications, protection, and interpretation and that there are few studies regarding museums as an important platform with varied content that can communicate Chinese culture and ethics to the international community (Zhang, 2018). So far, museums and museum professionals, both in China and abroad, have gathered certain practical experiences in raising the international profile of museums.

Overseas Museums’ Efforts to Raise International Profile

At a conference on strategy development in 2009, representatives of the Smithsonian Institution in the US argued that museums should adapt to social changes brought about by social media. In this regard, the Städel Museum in Germany was among the earliest museums on social media, and it regularly uploads videos containing detailed exhibition information and professional commentaries to YouTube. Also, the Städel Museum attaches great importance to its interactive functions, creating online chat rooms for communication with users. These measures have attracted many online followers and numerous people to visit the museum, thus increasing its presence.

The emerging media landscape in the early 21st century is stimulating contemporary museums to pursue international influence and professional excellence. Overseas museums are striving to diversify the use of social media to better communicate and interact with the public. In practice, overseas museums’ progress in increasing their global presence has several dimensions.

A shift of focus from “visitor orientation” to “visitor participation.”

Museums in the UK (e.g., the British Museum) have begun to pay more attention to the community they serve and attract a larger population to the museum by hosting targeted displays and activities. This breaking down of barriers was pivotal to raising the international profile. The British Museum is committed to removing unfavorable factors (i.e., language barriers, poor exchanges, cultural differences) that affect visitor experiences to create a stronger sense of participation for people from different backgrounds. The British Museum has improved its approach to exhibition planning by setting up an interpretation team responsible for conducting a series of visitor surveys and research to understand the needs of different visitor groups. Based on the survey results, they can select exhibits, interpret exhibitions, create formats, and hold activities in a targeted way, thereby increasing visits.

Changes in the relationships between museums and governments.

Museums in the US and Europe are traditionally known for being independent, and national museums have kept “the length of an arm” distance from the government since the mid-1980s. The government does not directly engage in the day-to-day museum operations but plays an important role in supporting museums in relevant international cooperation and exchanges. For example, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS), as the UK’s cultural sector, determines the UK government’s funding for museums and strategies to help them to work internationally. Another example is the British Council, sponsored by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office. It is the UK international organization for cultural relations and educational opportunities, and it offers a special fund to museums in the UK for international collaboration and exchange. In addition, the Department for International Trade (DIT) is tasked with funding foreign cultural exchanges, including museum exhibitions both in and outside the UK.

Use of touring exhibitions to raise profiles.

For museums, exhibition exchanges are an important part of international cooperation,and overseas museums have adhered to the principle of “bringing in and going global.”In major European and American museums, an international exchange division usually organizes touring exhibitions to promote international exchanges. And this can be exemplified by the British Museum, which developed a well-received international touring exhibition on the theme of the movieHarry Potter.

Chinese Museums’ Efforts to Raise International Profiles

On May 18, 2021, theAnnual Assessment Report 2020 on the International Influence of Chinese Museums (Exhibitions)(hereinafter referred to as “theReport”) was issued.From a domestic perspective, theReportshows how museums in China strove to raise their international profiles. TheReportmentions indicators proposed by relevant experts and scholars concerning media coverage, social media, search volume, international visitors, and international research. These indicators are thought to reflect the influence of museums.

Diversification of media coverage and social media.

In the omnimedia era, museums have witnessed changes in the ways of cultural communication.

Museums in China release news on various exhibitions on their official websites, social media accounts (i.e., WeChat, Weibo), digital interactive display walls, brochures and posters,and also through channels such as self-guided audio tours, forums, and lectures. Driven by new media technology, museum-based media operations are sure to follow a diversity of methods and approaches to cultural communication.

Diversification of exhibition modes.

TheAnnual Assessment Report 2020 on the International Influence of Chinese Museums(Exhibitions)advises that Chinese museums should identify “cloud exhibition” as a longrange objective in their top-down design. It is noteworthy that the “impact of cloud exhibition” appeared as an evaluation indicator for the first time. According to theReport,“cloud exhibition” is a new mode creatively developed from traditional modes of museum exhibitions against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic and has become a priority over other museum service innovations, showing unprecedented momentum. For example, during the outbreak of Covid-19 in 2020, the Palace Museum released theGuidebook to a “Cloud Tour” around the Forbidden Cityand launched five online exhibitions and panoramic digital exhibition halls, including the “New Year Exhibition in the Forbidden City.” This novel move,covered by overseas media and mentioned in 160 news reports, quickly went viral on social media overseas.

In 2020, Chinese museums made great efforts to raise their international profile, creating momentum for cultural communication. Still, there is one perceived weakness in Chinese museums’ communication: their inability to make the most of big data to create buzz on social media for better promotion. This shows that it is imperative to combine culture with technology and traditional media with new media to attract more attention to museums while presenting and spreading the fascinating Chinese culture.

The Sanxingdui Museum’s Building of International Communication Capacity: An Analysis of the Current Status

An Overview of the Sanxingdui Museum

The Sanxingdui archaeological site is located in the town of Sanxingdui, Guanghan, on the south bank of the Jian River (also known as River Duck, a tributary of the Tuo River) in the northern Chengdu Plain, some 40 km south of Chengdu. In 1929, Yan Daocheng, a local villager, unearthed a pit filled with more than 400 exquisite jade and stone artifacts while repairing a sewage ditch at the side of his house in Sanxingdui, Guanghan. Immediately afterward, the Guanghan Jade rose to fame, and in the more than 90 years that followed,many archaeologists have conducted excavations at the Sanxingdui site. In 1934, David Crockett Graham, then director of the West China Union University (WCUU) Museum,decided to investigate and headed up a team to undertake an archaeological excavation in and around Yan’s courtyard. This was the first archaeological excavation of what is now known as Sanxingdui. Graham deduced the relics were remains of the ancient Shu state in Sichuan, calling it the “Guanghan Culture.” In the mid-20th century, several archaeological institutions in Sichuan province conducted a series of investigations at the Sanxingdui site.They tentatively excavated a small part of its Moon Bay terrace, through which archaeologists deduced that the site of Sanxingdui should belong to the ancient Shu civilization, and that the site was once a major political and cultural center of the ancient Shu state. Since the 1980s,the Sichuan Provincial Cultural Relics and Archeology Research Institute, along with other archaeological units, have continued to conduct comprehensive and systematic archaeological investigations (150 square kilometers), archaeological explorations (12 square kilometers),and archaeological excavations (20,000 square meters) at the Sanxingdui site. In 1986, two sacrificial pits were accidentally discovered that won the site worldwide attention. Over the past years, the Sanxingdui site has been included in “Archaeological China,” a major project funded by the National Cultural Heritage Administration (NCHA), and the “Protection and Inheritance of Ancient Shu Civilization,” a project sponsored by the People’s Government of Sichuan Province for further exploration and excavation. From November 2019 to May 2020,six more sacrificial pits were successively discovered at the site in Sanxingdui. From the six pits, 534 artifacts (including those made of ivory, bronze, gold, and jade) and some 2,000 artifact fragments were unearthed.

The main cultural deposit at the Sanxingdui site dates from the late Neolithic, through the Xia, Shang, and Western Zhou dynasties, to the early Spring and Autumn period (2800 BC-600 BC). During this period, for over 2,000 years, the ancient Shu people lived in Sichuan,going through the complete process of a civilization from embryo, emergence, development,heyday, and on to decay. The cultural relics unearthed at the Sanxingdui site are a vivid reflection of the inclusiveness and creativity of the ancient Shu civilization and also the best expression of the richness, diversity, and inclusiveness of the Chinese civilization. These cultural relics contribute significantly to the profound Chinese civilization we have today.

The Sanxingdui Museum is a theme museum built at the very site of Sanxingdui. It was opened in October 1997 and covered an area of 1,000mu(about 666,000 square meters),including a pavilion area of 12,000 square meters. The museum features multiple functions,ranging from the collection, protection, and display of cultural relics, to academic research and social education. It is distinguished by an extensive collection of precious cultural relics unique to ancient Sichuan and unearthed at the Sanxingdui site.

The Sanxingdui Museum’s Building of International Communication Capacity

The Sanxingdui Museum was among the first batch of museums, heritage, and cultural institutions in China to have both a Weibo and WeChat account, with steady gains in followers. The Sanxingdui Museum registered its WeChat official account (@sanxingdui1997) on April 28, 2014. As of the end of 2017, the account had gained 77,000 followers and an average of over 4,000 visits per post. The official Weibo and WeChat accounts of the Sanxingdui Museum give full play to the characteristics of social media platforms(i.e., wide-coverage, real-time delivery, large information volume, frequent updates). The operation management is in the change charge of a highly professional team that carefully plans meaningful special activities and explores valuable resources from heritage sites and museums. For example, they diversify their posts on Weibo and WeChat by using different pictures, videos, graphics interchange formats (GIFs), and hyperlinks to create quality content that can boost the Chinese people’s cultural confidence and provoke their thinking.

Analysis of the Sanxingdui Museum’s International Communication Capacity

The Sanxingdui Museum is a member of the International Council of Museums (ICOM),and was among the first batch of AAAA National Tourist Attractions and the first batch of national first-grade museums in China. Recently, it has been included in the latest tentative list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in China. The Sanxingdui brand is one of the three major boutique international tours designed and promoted by Sichuan. Ever since its opening in 1997, the Sanxingdui site has served as a bridge for international friendships, receiving over 22 million visitors both from China and abroad (Editorial Staff of Sanxingdui, n.d.). To improve international communication, the Sanxingdui Museum has developed a rather sound and complete foreign language service system, including an English website, real-person guides in English and Japanese, as well as audio tour guides in English, Japanese, Korean,French, German, and Russian. In addition, English-language brochures are distributed to foreign visitors from time to time, and English and Japanese translations are provided on all signage inside the museum.

Although with rather sound and complete foreign language service facilities, the Sanxingdui Museum still has room for improvement. From 2014 to 2018, its international communication capacity was built in an extensive and homogeneous way, which was reflected in its excessive reliance on state-owned media resources, a lack of diversity in media resources and communication channels, and insufficient use of new media to improve its international communication.

Countermeasures and Suggestions

Since 2019, to better promote the numerous cultural relics unearthed at the Sanxingdui site, the Sanxingdui Museum has made outstanding efforts to improve heritage exhibitions,increase cultural publicity, and build up international communication capacity. Below are the countermeasures already taken and suggestions proposed for future work.

Call for Entries: Global Solicitation for the Conceptual Design of the New Museum to Help Its Exhibitions “Go Global”

The Sanxingdui Museum is committed to building a world-class, domestically leading site museum that can meet the needs of new discoveries at the Sanxingdui site, better protect cultural relics, and raise its exhibitions to a new level. To this end, a global solicitation for the conceptual design of the new museum was launched in October 2020, attracting 36 design firms and teams from China and 21 from abroad to enter for design selection. As a result, the design scheme co-formulated by Arata Isozaki & Associates (in Japan) and China Southwest Architectural Design and Research Institute Co., Ltd. was recommended by the review panel.Through the global solicitation for design, the Sanxingdui Museum has built a reputation as an iconic cultural building that combines international fashion with Chinese style, drawing global attention in the early stage of the new museum construction.

For cultural relics, an exhibition is a direct form of presentation. Overseas exhibitions are like a “window display” that shows the charm of traditional Chinese culture to the world. In the 1970s and 1980s, regional culture emerged as a hot topic in cultural studies. Since then,it has become a duty and also the objective for prestigious museums to hold regional culturethemed exhibitions. Thus, regional cultural brands are increasingly highlighted, and regional culture-themed exhibitions are staged one after another (Wan, 2022). Over the past few years,Sanxingdui relics have been on display in museums in more than a dozen countries. Among these museums are the Olympic Museum (Lausanne, Switzerland), the Villa Hügel (Essen,Germany), the British Museum (London, UK), the Hôtel de Ville [City Hall] (Paris, France),the Tokyo National Museum (Uenokoen, Tokyo, Japan), the Asian Civilizations Museum(Singapore), the National Museum of Palazzo Venezia (Rome, Italy). The Sanxingdui Museum, in collaboration with eight museums and heritage and cultural institutions(i.e., Jinsha Site Museum, Sichuan Museum), curated the “Encounter between Gods and Humans: Sanxingdui, Ancient Civilization of Sichuan, China,” a special exhibition taking into full consideration Western viewers’ mindsets, aesthetic preferences, and exhibition environments. The exhibition toured Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli [Naples National Archaeological Museum] and the Museum of the Imperial Fora in the Trajan’s Markets in Rome, Italy, for nearly 12 months from 2018 to 2019, receiving a total of 950,000 enthusiastic visitors (Zhu, 2019). As an “art interpretation,” the exhibition combined Chinese cultural relics with traditional Western architecture, historical relics, and natural landscapes in a unique form of presentation, facilitating an intuitive, open dialogue between civilizations in a global context. These overseas exhibitions have aroused the attention of local people,further enabled dialogue between the two time-honored civilizations in the East and West,enhanced the construction of a discourse system for external communication, and increased exchanges between Chinese and foreign cultures. Capable of expressing Chinese culture and telling China’s stories well in the most intuitive way, the overseas exhibitions are compared to a “high-speed train” that carries Chinese culture to the rest of the world.

Joint Application for World Heritage Status with the Jinsha Site

All of the World Heritage sites in China are deemed important cultural landmarks and intellectual markers. According to the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) criterion as specified inThe Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention, a specific property to be inscribed on theWorld Heritage Listshould be of “cultural and/or natural significance which is so exceptional as to transcend national boundaries and to be of common importance for present and future generations of all humanity.” A culture can be universal only if it has characteristics unique to the nation to which it belongs (Zhen, 2002, p. 36). The Sanxingdui site is an outstanding representative of bronze civilizations in the Yangtze River basin of China, and used to be the largest capital city with the richest cultural resources in this region. The Sanxingdui site played a prominent part in the development of bronze civilizations in East Asia and even the world.

The Sanxingdui site, the joint tombs of boat-shaped coffins of the ancient Shu state, and the Jinsha site all belong to the ancient Shu civilization. For this reason, they share some common characteristics and are interrelated in terms of historical time and space, social background, cultural connotations, heritage properties, and material remains. Together, they reflect the cultural elements unique to the ancient Shu people (local witchcraft, sacrificial rites, wars, and other major historical events), and have distinctive features and results not possessed by other bronze civilizations in China or the rest of the world.

The ruins of the ancient Shu civilization, comprising the joint tombs of boat-shaped coffins of the ancient Shu state, the Sanxingdui site, and the Jinsha site, were included in the tentative list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in China in 2013. The UNESCOWorld Heritage Listhas become a wind vane of heritage museums in China. The Sanxingdui Museum took the initiative to draw on the experience of previously successful applicants and sticks to the World Heritage principle of authenticity, integrity, and minimal intervention in preparation for application. On December 18, 2021, the Sanxingdui site and the Jinsha site signed a joint application for World Heritage status. Once successfully inscribed on UNESCOWorld Heritage List, the two sites will gain more recognition and respect from the global arts, heritage, and museums (AHM) sectors, and gather global resources for the inheritance and protection of traditional Chinese culture, particularly the ancient Shu culture.

Establishment of the Sanxingdui Workstation as Part of the China-Greece Belt and Road Joint Laboratory on Cultural Heritage Conservation Technology

Cultural relics, each of which is a piece of history, are non-renewable resources. The protection of cultural relics is a cornerstone of museum operations. The excavation of the Sanxingdui site, which is rare evidence of the “unity in diversity” and cultural exchange between ethnic groups within the ancient Chinese civilization, has adhered to the following principle: “pre-task design, sync-protection, multidisciplinary integration, and cross-team collaboration.” During the new round of excavations in 2019, some archaeological tents and shelters were set up at the Sanxingdui site to ensure a seamless transition from archaeological excavation to the preservation of cultural relics. Also, there were a range of supporting facilities, including an integrated platform for emergency protection, a protection system for unearthed cultural relics, an environmental monitoring system for earthen sites, an information extraction system, an excavation and delivery system, as well as the Sanxingdui Workstation under the China-Greece Belt and Road Joint Laboratory on Cultural Heritage Conservation Technology. The Sanxingdui Workstation has maintained collaborative partnerships with 34 academic institutions, including but not limited to the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), China National Silk Museum,Peking University, Sichuan University, and Shanghai University. Their joint efforts have been made in research topics concerning the following areas: digital surveying and mapping,geophysical prospecting, carbon-14 dating, environmental archaeology, zoo-archaeology,paleoethnobotany, archaeometallurgy, analysis of raw jade sources, stable isotope analysis,micro-trace analysis, ancient DNA analysis, modern instrumental analysis, and 3D printing. For example, using enzyme-linked immunoassay, a research team from the China National Silk Museum found silk protein in the ash layer of Pit 4, and through microscopic observation, they found textile traces in the same ash layer, indicating the prior presence of silk in Pit 4. The Sanxingdui Museum, in collaboration with multiple institutions both in China and abroad, has taken an interdisciplinary research approach to the further exploration of the profound meaning of the unearthed cultural relics. By doing so, relevant archaeologists have managed to deepen the perception of the cultural heritage of the ancient Shu civilization and improve their skills in extracting and preserving fragile cultural relics.

Creative Use of Cultural Relics to Innovate Cultural Experiences

Cultural relics are at the core of museum resources. Thanks to the rapid growth of the Chinese economy, the Chinese people’s living standards have improved continuously. At present, a new consumption pattern, which highlights “museum as a lifestyle,” is nurturing more cultural and creative products and services (Miu, 2019). The Sanxingdui Museum has found its niche in the arts, heritage, and museums (AHM) sectors and is now committed to spreading cultural values. According to the characteristics of its collection of cultural relics,the Sanxingdui Museum strives to inject new vigor and vitality into the cultural relics by developing relevant cultural products, producing relevant animations and movies, and issuing relevant publications.

In June 2014, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang presented a replica of the No. 39 bronze mask with protruding eyes from the Sanxingdui site as a gift to the Heraklion Archaeological Museum in Crete, Greece (Xiang, 2014). In May 2015, Li Keqiang presented a gold mask replica as a gift to Peru (Hou, 2015). The fact that replicas from the Sanxingdui site were twice chosen as diplomatic gifts indicates the unique position of the Sanxingdui culture among ancient civilizations in the world, demonstrates the openness and inclusiveness of the Sanxingdui culture, and also conveys the friendly feelings of the Chinese people.

In terms of cultural and creative productions, the Sanxingdui Museum has found a new way of tackling perceived homogeneity through vivid and relatable designs. It is trying to cater to the young while continuing to advocate professionalism and sophistication. By doing so, the Sanxingdui Museum can put away the established view of culture and art as “something to be looked up to” and prevent the public from becoming weary of cultural and creative products and instead to integrate its cultural derivatives featuring ancient Shu culture in contemporary life. The Sanxingdui Museum strives to transform its cultural capital into economic capital through the superposition of cultural concepts (i.e., values, ethos), the accumulation of cultural resources, the innovation of cultural institutions, and the development of cultural products (Fu & Yue, 2018). In June 2019, the Sanxingdui Museum started a systematic examination and improvement of its cultural and creative product development system. Thanks to this, it has since developed more than 300 cultural and creative items in seven categories,including trendy Sanxingdui foods such as “bronze-flavored” ice cream and cultural relicshaped moon cakes and lollipops. This renewed development system, which features multisector collaboration, is now developing more trendy items, some being “Internet sensations.”Its cultural and creative products are now available at the Sichuan Cultural Tourism Experience Store inside Chengdu Tianfu International Airport, achieving rapid growth in sales. In addition, the Sanxingdui Museum has signed a brand licensing agreement with more than 30 companies (i.e., Vivo, Tencent, Sanjin Guilin Watermelon Frost, DingTalk, Erke) to give play to the Sanxingdui brand and its rich collection of cultural relics. Meanwhile, it has established co-branding partnerships with over ten well-known companies, including but not limited to the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), Changhong, and Geely,successively launching a series of promotions, such as “Changhong & Sanxingdui Museum Collection Edition Chao TV,” “Vivo & Sanxingdui Museum Chinese New Year Blessing Limited Edition Gift Box,” and the “Marvelous Snail & Sanxingdui Game Scripts.” The Sanxingdui Museum enables innovative development of traditional culture by taking brandnew approaches to cultural and creative development, such as independent development, cobranding, and brand licensing.

In the new era, museum publicity has become increasingly diversified. The Sanxingdui Museum has tentatively branched out into the movie industry by taking its iconic images,such as bronze heads (with gold foil masks) and sunbirds, to the big screen. So far,Sanxingdui images have appeared in more than 20 works, including movies, TV series,novels, and games. In particular, the animationSanxingdui Glory Awakeningand the movieNe Zha: Birth of the Demon Child(featuring Sanxingdui images) were both well received.Two more Sanxingdui-themed animated movies,Golden MaskandSanxingdui Fantasy,are expected to come out in 2022. The application of Sanxingdui elements to literary and artistic works can help export Chinese culture and align the Chinese cultural sector with international standards more quickly.

Application of an Omnimedia Matrix to the Global Promotion of the Sanxingdui Brand

The global outbreak of Covid-19 in 2020 posed a major challenge for cultural communication in the museum sector while accelerating the transformation of the traditional communication modes, which meant a greater opportunity for the museum sector. In the“post-pandemic” era, the Sanxingdui Museum is adjusting its communication ideas and paths accordingly. More specifically, it actively echoes the call of the State Council, National Cultural Heritage Administration (NCHA), and the People’s Government of Sichuan Province, diversifying its media publicity which was previously characterized by monotonous regularity. By building a distinctive image, the Sanxingdui Museum strives to promote its unique culture among different audiences in various areas.

On May 28, 2021, the Sanxingdui Museum held a global promotion named “Sanxingdui Culture: A Threshold to Chinese Civilization,” at which the latest findings were unveiled. On this occasion, nine strategic partnership projects were released for the global promotion of the Sanxingdui culture. The nine projects on Sanxingdui are as follows: (a) the Sanxingdui series of theLooking China International Youth Film Project; (b) an international publication project; (c) theDiscovering Sanxingdui Documentarypartnership project; (d) a movie production project; (e) an original musical project; (f) an international digital exhibition project; (g) theSanxingdui Culture: A Threshold to Chinese Civilizationproject for the design and global promotion of cultural experience goods; (h) a global lantern exhibition;and (i) the Sanxingdui-Tencent project for new cultural and creative cooperation (Wu et al.,2021). The global promotion makes the most of the intellectual and cultural resources of the Sanxingdui site. It integrates a diversity of cultural elements to boost Sanxingdui as a brand in various channels, interpret Sanxingdui as a culture in multiple dimensions, and present the mysterious ancient Shu civilization to the world.

In 2022, the international popularity of Sanxingdui continues to rise, with its TikTok account attracting more than 20 million visits online and several videos on artifacts newly unearthed at the site gaining over one million views. Via internationally influential social networking services such as TikTok, the Sanxingdui Museum has further built up its capacity for dissemination, and thus helped enhance the cultural soft power of China. Domestically,a giant bronze mask, which was newly unearthed in June 2021, made its debut at the China Central Television’s 2022 Spring Festival Gala, where it was jointly unveiled by Zhang Guoli,an actor and also presenter of the programNational Treasure, and Ran Honglin, director of the Sanxingdui Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute. This combination of a cultural relic with a traditional Chinese festival has stimulated curiosity about archaeology among people both in China and abroad while enabling the fine traditional Chinese culture to go global.

Drawing support from theThree-Year Action Plan for Internet Plus Chinese Civilization,the Sanxingdui Museum has taken an open and inclusive attitude, initiating a new service model in the arts, heritage, and museums (AHM) sectors to highlight the profound culture behind the relics (Li & Sun, 2019). It added virtual reality (VR) technology and animation effects to the live stream of its archaeological excavation, making the usually stereotypical and boring process easy to understand and interesting on screen. Take theNew Findings at Sanxingdui, a special program aired on the News Channel of China Central Television(CCTV-13), as an example. So far, the special program has had an audience of over 43.8 million, and its live streaming video viewers via the CCTV app, have reached 164 million.In addition, the Sanxingdui Museum has kept using trending topics on new media platforms such as Weibo, Bilibili, and Kuaishou to facilitate the second-step or even multi-step flow of communication to maximize the influence of the ancient Shu culture.

Conclusion

To further develop museum culture in the new era, we should adhere to the correct cultural values and give full play to cultural relics and heritage as advantageous resources.In the “post-pandemic” era, the increase in a museum’s international influence relies on the improvement of its curatorial capacity, both in China and abroad, the development of quality cultural and creative products, and the integration of online and offline approaches to cultural display and dissemination. The Sanxingdui Museum takes an open and inclusive attitude to explore a new approach to promoting traditional Chinese culture through vivid exhibits.With its functions well defined, the Sanxingdui Museum will further improve its overseas exhibitions by building world-class pavilions. Meanwhile, it will focus on its priorities (i.e.,the protection and study of cultural relics, the application for World Heritage status, and the promotion of the Sanxingdui brand via multimedia) to maximize the role of the museum in communication and to contribute more to the development of the museum sector in the new era.