Demand for cultural calendars rising
The central government’s clampdown on lavish spending by public officials has helped spawn a renaissance in one area of publishing — the production of high-quality calendars that highlight the country’s culture.
Such calendars, with exquisite art and writing, have become hugely popular since October 2013. That’s when the spending crackdown put a halt to the decades-old annual ritual of State-owned companies buying and giving calendars as gifts — although not of the quality of the artistic ones now on the market.
As a result, publishers have competed to come up with calendars for which people are willing to fork out good money.
One such customer is Xu Caixia, 29, of Suzhou, Jiangsu province. A few days ago, she was delighted to receive by courier a calendar whose theme is the Chinese novel A Dream of Red Mansions. It was the second calendar she bought for 2016.
“Earlier I got a Forbidden City calendar,” said Xu, an aficionado of painting and calligraphy. “I wasn’t expecting much from the second one, and it has really surprised me. It was beautifully packaged, and there is a timeline of the life of the author, Cao Xueqin.”
Inside the calendar are more than 100 poems from the novel and their interpretation, as well as more than 100 samples of ancient Chinese painting and calligraphy.
In Beijing, Polley Wu, 29, bought a calendar whose theme is food. It consists of 365 cards detailing an assortment of foods. “I love the fine watercolor paintings of the various foods,” Wu said.
Beijing Guoke Interactive Technology Media, which produced the food calendar, said the first group of about 100,000 copies for 2016 sold out within 14 hours last month, compared with the 20,000 copies that sold out in two days the previous year.
About 280,000 copies of the Forbidden City 2016 calendar have been sold, said its producer, Forbidden City Publishing House. That compares with 228,000 copies for a similar calendar for 2015.
Forbidden City Publishing House, a pioneer in making such calendars, produced the first one in 1932 for the following year.