Cultural calendars for the new year are hot sellers

The Red Chamber Dream calendar [Photo/dangdang.com]

A batch of well-designed cultural calendars were hot sellers at the end of the year and now posting photos of the calendars has become a new fad on social networks.

According to Beijing Evening News, the cultural calendars, with creative designs, informative content and delicate printing, are mostly priced from 60 to 100 yuan (about $9-15). Though the price is a little higher than most traditional datebooks, these editions are selling quite well this year.

More than 50,000 volumes of the Palace Museum's 2016 datebook were sold on the Nov 11 Singles Day last year, and since then it has remained a best-seller among the art books on JD.com, an online marketplace.

In addition to the Palace Museum's datebook, other cultural calendars, such as Calendar: Beauty of Chinese Characters, the Red Chamber Dream calendar and the Penguins 2016 Wall Calendar also have been quite popular on the market. Several cultural calendars are among the Sanlian Taofen Bookstore's list of bestsellers. The Red Chamber Dream calendar was voted as one of the top 10 good books of 2015 in the Zhonghua Book Company's online poll, which surprised the publisher.

Though the cultural calendars are a return to traditions, designers are racking their brains to make the calendars appear more attractive.

The cover for the Red Chamber Dream calendar was made using a special kind of paper with a red woven design, which echoes its name, and also symbolizes the joyous and prosperous new year. Inside the datebook, poems, ancient paintings from the classic novel, Dream of the Red Chamber, as well as the inclusion of traditional customs, festivals and solar terms make the datebook seem elegant and informative.

Calendar: Beauty of Chinese Characters, however, has 12 themes for the year and tells about the origin of Chinese characters, the evolution of chirography, or penmanship, and other interesting information about Hanzi, the name for the characters. By reading the whole book,one can gain a complete knowledge of Hanzi's history.

At the same time, many people are also posting the photos of their cultural calendars on social networks with their comments, which have evoked memories of traditional knowledge.