New app unfolds traditional Chinese fan culture

Tag Design, a Chinese mobile internet start-up, launched a new app with which users can learn the history of China's ancient folding fan through eye-catching graphics, vivid animations and interesting games in a bid to take advantage of digitalization to promote traditional Chinese culture.

The newly-launched app, Folding Fan, explains the technique for making traditional folding fans in 16 steps and includes a small game for each step. Users can experience the whole process of making a fan, starting from choosing the bamboo, which is the initial material used to make a fan.

Notably, this is not the first time that the company has designed apps of such kind. This young company developed Wood Joints in 2014, an app focused on China's classic tenon-and-mortise joints used in woodworking, which has been downloaded over 4 million times and won Best App on the App Store for China in 2014.

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple Inc, also visited the company when he came to China. He said that Wood Joints has brought some uniqueness to the Chinese market.

Sun Yong, founder of the company, said that based on their experience of running apps, they found that technology is a direct and interesting way of sharing obscure culture and knowledge.

In addition to learning the structure of fans, users can learn more about the history of Chinese fans through three-dimensional animations. The app's design team also invited a group of popular artists to design paintings for the fan.

Compared to other apps, "Folding Fan" appears to be simple but is enchanting. Users can simply immerse themselves into the long history of traditional Chinese culture via up-to-date technology.

"We are a young and small team but we try out best to appeal to people to learn more about traditional Chinese culture through a mobile phone app, giving them a new platform for more people to learn, especially the young," Sun said.