New season of National Treasure to reignite cultural heritage fervor

Introducing more artifacts to the public and continuing the legacy of the first season from 2017, National Treasure, one of China's most popular TV shows on cultural heritage, recently began production of its second season.

Although the second season will use similar choreography, background music and storylines as seen in the first season, it will also feature new cultural relics, new "national treasure guardians" and new elements drawn from folk music, musicals and dancing drama.

Scoring 9.0 out of 10 points on Chinese rating platform Douban, the first season introduces a total of 27 cultural relics that were selected from the Palace Museum and eight other iconic museums in China.

Cast members also express the significance of each artifact through historical drama while artists, painters, craftsmen, museum volunteers and others share their own stories and knowledge related to such relics.

Almost every episode of the show has been viewed over 10 million times on v.qq.com, a Chinese video website, while the first episode alone has been viewed 44 million times.

The new season will continue to see the partnering of the Palace Museum and China Central Television, with eight new partner museums across China also on board, including Hebei Museum, Shanxi Museum, Shandong Museum and Guangdong Museum.

"When we walked into the eight new partner museums, we realized again how limited we were in understanding the long history of China and the rich collection of cultural heritage preserved in museums," said Yu Lei, producer and chief director of the show.

China had nearly 5,000 registered museums nationwide as of the end of 2016, welcoming about 900 million visitors annually.

"Amid changes, we will stick to our unchanged aspiration of bringing museums and heritage back to life, and seeking to explore and create new content," Yu said.