What would you do when you find some special souvenirs that perfectly combine the rich elements of the Forbidden City and the functional creativity of daily life with funny and cute images? Buy them!

The Forbidden City has always shown its solemnity to the public over the centuries. But since it publicized its creative souvenirs for the first time in 2013, it made a big hit and attracted people's attention for not only its ancient heritage but also its various stylish cultural products.

For most travelers, bringing home something as souvenirs of a visit or as gifts to family and friends marks a meaningful end of the journey. As a result, the Forbidden City always sells cultural items that are creatively designed and present high functionality and great quality at reasonable prices.

From the window to the roof, from the emperors' clothing to the empress' jewelry, the Forbidden City explores its abundant elements to get inspiration for its cultural products, trying to make its ancient culture into people's daily life.

It is recommended to go to the row of small houses next to the east of Shenwumen, where there are Culture Products Exhibition and stores with an official permit.

Curious visitors may be interested in their top sellers, including Court Beads earphones, Qing Official Headwear umbrellas, Mini Imperial Cat fridge magnets, Dragon-Phoenix Robe protective cases for mobile phones, emperor series tapes, Qing Dynasty princess bookmarks, and more.

Online stores on T-mall and Taobao, two e-commerce platforms under the Alibaba corporation are also available for buying creative cultural products from the Palace Museum.

From varieties of souvenirs to food service, some people worry that businesses may make the Forbidden City money-centered and damage its original culture. In fact, the Palace Museum has gained benefits through cultural creativity products by making billions of dollars over the years, but all its income is used for the management of the museum and repair of relics, as well as charity work.

Although there are some arguments against too much business, you can't deny that the 600-year-old Forbidden City is becoming younger and more energetic through these museum products.

Cultural traditions shape who you are. Lear n more about your traditions and how you can preserve them by means of the followings.

Share your culture art.

Each culture is carried by different forms of art. Museums often house items like clothing, music instruments, and visual artworks. However, beyond these exhibits, there exist tools crafted by ancestors, which present the traditions through generations’ wisdom. 【小题1】

Attend or organize major events.

Your country, religious organizations, or immigrant ethnic groups almost certainly celebrate major holidays or cultural festivals. 【小题2】 If there aren’t any of those in your area, you can arrange your own events.

Cook family recipes.

Find some recipes from your grandmother’s cookbook. 【小题3】 As you knead dough (揉面) or follow the right amount of spices, you might remember meals from your childhood or holidays. Cooking your family recipes can help you inherit the family tradition and make it possibly passed down.

Promote your dialects (方言).

Language shapes culture to some degree. Therefore, promoting a dialect contributes to the protection of a certain culture. 【小题4】 So if you know one of them, help to spread it. With more and more people speaking, these dialects could be successfully preserved before they go extinct.

Spend time with other members of the community.

The best way to preserve your culture is to keep it alive. 【小题5】 Many aspects of culture are difficult to learn in books and museums, including body language, and humor. But you can get to the core (核心) of the cultural experience through daily communication.

Discoveries at the famous Sanxingdui ruins in Southwest China show that the region’s ancient Shu Kingdom Civilization shared similarities with the Maya.

The Sanxingdui ruins belonged to the Shu Kingdom that existed at least 4,800 years ago and lasted more than 2,000 years, while the Mayan civilization built its city-states around 200 AD．

The bronze-made remains of trees unearthed at the ruins of the Shu Kingdom resemble the sacred ceiba tree, which symbolized the union of heaven, earth and the underworld in the Mayan civilization. “They are very important similarities,” says Santos, a Mexican archaeologist (考古学家) stressing that “the representations of trees in both cultures provide a symbolism that is very similar”.

The findings at the Sanxingdui ruins, considered one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the 20th century, also show a new aspect of Bronze Age culture, indicating the ancient civilization already had technologies that were thought to have been developed much later.

While the time span between the Shu kingdom and the Mayan culture is great, the findings highlight the closeness between the two civilizations. They developed in areas with comparable climates and reflected their worldview through related symbols. “In the end, man is still man, independent of time and space. What we have is that, at this latitude (纬度), both the Shu people and the Mayans looked at the same sky and had the same stars on the horizon,” the expert says.

One notable feature of the recent discoveries at Sanxingdui was the cross-subject work and technology applied by teams of Chinese archaeologists, which allowed the unearthing of artifacts as fragile as silk remains, which other types of less careful digging methods would not have been able to register.

Cooperation between Chinese and Mexican archaeologists could benefit projects in the Mayan world, where the rainy climate and humidity are problematic for the conservation of ruins.

“Every time our cultural knowledge increases, regardless of whether we speak one language or another, what it shows us is that we continue to be sister cultures and, therefore, the exchange of such knowledge is fundamental,” says Santos.