A museum in China opens beforehand thanks to hit song

Photo: Screenshot from website

The Pu Songling Museum in Zibo, East China’s Shandong Province partially opened to the public in advance on August 4. The popular song Luocha Haishi attracted numerous people to visit the Pu Songlong Museum as its title describes a story in the famous Liaozhai Zhiyi, or Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, by Chinese famous novelist Pu Songling, during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

The song craze causes “Liaozhai fever” in the country. 

The museum decided to open early to meet the visiting needs of the majority of Liaozhai culture enthusiasts, “Under the premise of ensuring the safety of cultural relics and the safety of visitors, we have decided to partially open to the public from August 4,” published on the Pu Songling Museum official Wechat account, While “the Pu Songling Museum has been fully booked running from August 5 to August 6.” 

“After listening to Dao Lang's Luocha Haishi, I wanted to learn more about China's profound traditional culture and became interested in Pu Songling's Liaozhai Zhiqi, so I plan to visit the museum next week,” Hu Hou, a museum enthusiast, told the Global Times on Sunday. 

Actually the Pu Songling Museum plans to open to the public on August 15, in the process of repairing the museum, they have found a number of problems that could not be found in the preliminary survey,which increased the amount of work. At the same time, “with the high temperature in the summer, precipitation and other factors also adversely affecting the progress of the repairs, the current work has not yet been completed, we do not have the conditions for opening,” a statement published on the official Wechat account on July 31. 

The song, Luocha Haishi or Luocha Kingdom by singer-songwriter Dao Lang, swept across the country on various social media platforms with 8 billion plays and the hashtag for the song got 360 million views on social media platform Douyin, according to China News. 

This song combines Chinese folk and ethnic stories, which were adapted from a Liaozhai Zhiyi tale of the same title and it tells the story of a merchant’s adventures in the distant kingdom called Luocha, where people regard ugliness as beauty. 

The Pu Songling Museum was formally know as the Pu Songling residence management committee, which was approved by Zibo Municipal People’s Government to build the Pu Songling Museum in 1980. 

Pu Songling’s portrait is a treasured relic in Pu Songling Museum, the portrait was painted by Zhu Xianglin, a famous painter of the Qing Dynasty, in 1713.