As the Spring Festival of the Year of the Snake approaches, many museums in Beijing have unveiled creative cultural products featuring the elements of the Chinese New Year. By skillfully combining their housed items with the elements of snakes, these museums aim to provide visitors with an even richer array of products embodying the blessings for the upcoming Chinese New Year.

The Palace Museum has designed a set of dolls inspired by the items in its collection. The golden plush snake figurine, adorned with a tiger-head hat and a red scarf, is intricately embroidered with plum blossom patterns and four-way Ruyi symbols, conveying the museum's wishes for good fortune and good luck to those who behold it.

The Café by the Forbidden City has also launched limited-edition boutique coffee cups for the Year of the Snake. The cup body embraces the iconic red hue of the Forbidden City and is adorned with the snake pattern inspired by the treasures housed in the Palace Museum, symbolizing perfection and reunion.

The National Museum of China offers a calendar made with woodblock printing techniques. The calendar's wrapper features the image of an "auspicious snake" coiling gracefully around a pastel gourd-shaped vase, adorned with an array of auspicious symbols that create a festive atmosphere. As soon as you open the calendar, you will surprisingly find that the patterns and texts for each month are ingeniously fused with the images of a little snake.

The "Auspicious Snake" themed quicksand refrigerator magnet, introduced by the Management Office of the White Stupa Temple, incorporates cultural motifs exclusive to the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368), showcasing four graceful lady snakes wearing the headgears popular among the aristocrats during the Yuan Dynasty. The magnet is further decorated with the icons of Beijing and the White Stupa Temple, including auspicious clouds and tower lights, all of which symbolize longevity and good fortune.

Dazhong Temple Ancient Bell Museum unveiled a refrigerator magnet with pendants. The magnet combines patterns of ancient architecture and cultural relics, with five decorative pendants shaped like bells such as the Yongle Bell and the Niu Bell, demonstrating the unique allure of the Chinese bell culture.

(Source: Beijing Daily App)