One of the best ways to bring an ancient artifact or relic to life is to reproduce it using modern materials and methods. This is exactly what practitioners of the cultural and creative industry have done with the small wild boar found on 7000 year-old Hemudu pottery. It can now be found adorning daily necessities such as cushions, pinafores, teacups and soup spoons.

A cushion is printed with a cartoon version of a Hemudu wild boar, a common figure on the pottery unearthed from the Hemudu cultural site. [Photo/ jfdaily.com]

Among the unexpected 1,329 participating works of the 2019 South Yangtze River Inspired Creative Contest, a competition themed on cultural inheritance and relics activation in the Yangtze River Delta region, there are lots of such works combining traditional culture with modern life.

For example, the image of a divine figure of the late Neolithic period, a relic exhibited in the Shanghai Museum, was made into a bottle opener fridge magnet.

Late Neolithic style bottle opener fridge magnets [Photo/ jfdaily.com]

In recent years, endless discussions have been held in the cultural and creative industry concerning how to be down-to-earth while maintaining the aesthetic pleasure of cultural derivatives, and how to attract young consumers through traditional cultural IP.

Two years’ experience of organizing the South Yangtze River Inspired Creative Contest, has helped the Cultural and Tourism Bureau of Changning District, one of the main organizers, to form an effective mode of developing cultural and creative products.

According to a person in charge of the Bureau, the establishment and standardization of the development mode is expected to enable China's millennia-old rich culture to truly integrate into the contemporary market and modern life, thus creating a wealth of products and services.