Utilitarian urban space gets new life as 'art blind box'

Walk about 100 meters east from West Lake in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, and you will arrive at Hubin Intime in77, a massive, national five-star open-air shopping and lifestyle mall. The mall has two sections, which are connected at one place, above the hustle and bustle, by an ordinary-looking pedestrian bridge. During the day, people cross the bridge without giving it a second look. At night, however, they cannot take their eyes off it, as 36 movable LED screens slowly unfold, transforming the passageway into a four-dimensional stage.

And then comes the surprise. A passerby might suddenly hear tender strains of The Butterfly Lovers (Liang Zhu), an aria from Romeo and Juliet, delicate water tones from a Kunqu opera or the pulse of electronic music. And it's free. No tickets need to be bought, no reservations made. Many of the pedestrians weren't even aware a performance was coming.

The bridge's appeal lies in its suspense value, which is why locals have aptly named it the "art blind box".

What the performance is going to be is deliberately undisclosed; audiences are, at most, given a broad theme in advance. As evening approaches, people start gathering under the bridge: working people on their way home, opera aficionados who have made a special trip, young people livestreaming on their phones and tourists dragging suitcases behind them.

As of July, the bridge has hosted more than 150 performances, attracting some 4.5 million visits in the past two years. Related videos and discussions have registered billions of views online, transforming what was merely a passageway into one of Hangzhou's most recognizable cultural landmarks, second only to the West Lake, perhaps.

It's impressive how the city came up with a new way of showcasing its culture.

For decades, public cultural services have largely followed a theater-centered model. Governments build venues; cultural institutions schedule performances; audiences buy tickets and show up. The arrangement is perfectly logical, but it also imposes a cost that is often overlooked. To consume culture, people must make time for it, travel to it and, in many cases, pay for it.

The "art blind box" reverses that relationship.

Instead of waiting for audiences to enter a theater, in this case culture enters people's lives, taking the very route people take. The performance is free. One does not have to book a seat in advance. There is no need to plan an evening around it.

Also, the "blind box" model lowers the threshold for participation. It makes high-quality cultural content available not only to those who are actively seeking it, but also to those who happen to be passing by.

The same concept extends to the space. The bridge was not designed as a cultural venue. It was infrastructure built for people to get from one side of the mall to the other. Like countless corners in cities around the world, it sat at a valuable location without having much value of its own. A simple innovation gave the bridge a new character. And such efficient utilization of space is just what cities confronting the limits of expansion need.

Urban development is increasingly about what to do with the space cities already have, rather than simply building more of it. Immersive content can often give an overlooked passageway, an empty plaza or an underused waterfront a new value, generating economic returns in the process.

In 2025, the Hubin commercial district recorded 93.5 million visitors, a 6 percent increase from the year before, while sales reached 11 billion yuan ($1.63 billion), up 5 percent. Whenever a performance is on at the bridge, traffic at nearby shopping centers and restaurants rises 16.5 percent. People who stop for a concert may stay on for dinner. Those who come for art may end up shopping at the stores.

The result is a cycle: culture generates foot traffic, foot traffic supports consumption, and commercial vitality creates incentives for further cultural investment.

That may be the most useful feature of the "art blind box" model. Public culture and commercial activity are often treated as separate spheres, sometimes even as competing interests. The bridge suggests they can reinforce one another when the incentives are properly aligned.

Yet its larger significance lies beyond one shopping district.

Cities everywhere contain forgotten spaces that are neither truly public nor fully commercial, neither abandoned nor fully used. Can they be turned into places where people would want to linger rather than simply pass by?

One need not construct another landmark building. Maybe a stage above a street, or a performance that begins when nobody expects it can achieve more.

A city becomes more livable not only by adding what it lacks, but by discovering value in what it already has. Hangzhou's "art blind box" offers a simple proposition: put culture where life is already happening, and allow surprise to become part of the urban routine.

The result is more than a clever use of a bridge. It is a different way of imagining the city — one in which public space carries content, culture becomes part of everyday life and an ordinary walk home can, for a few unexpected minutes, become a night at the theater.

The author is an associate researcher at the Institute of Finance and Banking of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a senior research fellow at the National Institution for Finance and Development.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

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