Culture as a commodity

The country's museums are going all out to reach the public - with cartoons, cushions and loads of trinkets

Something quirky was happening in the usually rarefied, straight-laced confines of Prince Kung's Mansion in Beijing. A show whose star turned to be a red fox dressed in the blue and white long suit of a prince was being held in the mansion, and hundreds of people, mostly young, had flocked to see it.

More other red foxes, with round hats, held in their hands a rendering of the Chinese character fu, meaning lucky, inspired by Emperor Kangxi's representation of fu as a birthday gift to his grandmother in 1673. It is part of the collection of Prince Kung's Palace Museum, as the mansion is officially known, and reproductions of it are the most popular products the museum's store sells.