China's living heritage · Digital halls
Five thousand years — one step into the painting
We lay five thousand years of Chinese heritage out as worlds you can walk into. Stroll a living old-Tianjin street with Xia Yuanbao, the New Year print boy; watch a great hall rise bracket by bracket with Master Yuan; print a woodblock picture or paint a clay figure yourself — so the crafts of our ancestors live on in the digital world.
I · Digital Halls
Every hall is a painting you can walk into: a character guides you through the crafts and stories of one place. Follow the guided tour stop by stop, or wander freely and try the crafts yourself.
Open
Tianjin Series
Where nine rivers meet, every old craft lines one street
Walk from the Haihe docks to the kite-filled sky, the Yangliuqing print workshop, the folk-arts teahouse, the clay-figurine studio and the crafts market — 22 traditional crafts you can try with your own hands. Collect six Era Tokens to earn a "Young Heritage Keeper" certificate.
Enter the hall
Open
Tianjin Series
One snowy temple fair, from Little New Year to the Lantern Festival
A little lion cub who leapt out of an ink painting walks you from the 23rd of the twelfth lunar month to the Lantern Festival: honour the Kitchen God, paste spring couplets, read New Year prints, wrap dumplings, stroll the temple fair, watch the lion dance and guess lantern riddles. Seven areas each tell the story of a custom and test one skill — collect six tokens to earn the "Young Keeper of New Year Customs" certificate.
Enter the hall Read the story: Ruirui Leaps out of the Painting
Open
Literati Series
A day-long literati gathering, from morning mist to moonlight
A day of elegant pursuits at a mountain academy: Song-dynasty scholar Master Yuan leads you from dawn to moonlight through the lecture hall, the study, the woodblock workshop, the tea pavilion, the incense room, the painting loft and the qin terrace — each tells the story of a Song pastime and hides a craft challenge.
Enter the hall
Coming soon
Architecture Series
Bracket by bracket, watch a great hall rise
A five-bay hip-and-gable hall built to Qing-dynasty modular rules: platform, timber frame, dougong brackets, painted beams and caisson ceiling — Master Yuan takes it apart layer by layer, then builds it back up.
Coming soonII · Crafts Reborn
Intangible heritage shouldn't only live behind museum glass. Working with master craftspeople, we turn the patterns and techniques of New Year prints, clay figurines, kites and folk arts into objects for everyday life — and we welcome museums, distributors and brands to develop products with us. (Design proposals; final products may vary.)
The temple fair begins, and Ruirui pounces out of the old ink scroll Auspicious Lions: the painting is flat, and the lion grows more three-dimensional the further he leaps. Hand-painted resin on a scroll base, numbered limited edition of 500.
Four hand-registered Yangliuqing woodblock prints of classic subjects, with a Xia Yuanbao collector certificate.
Hand-modelled and hand-painted in the Tianjin painted-clay tradition: Yuanbao hugging a carp and holding a lotus.
A Tianjin kite on a bamboo frame with hand-painted silk — fly it, or hang it on the wall.
A set of three etched brass bookmarks with floral motifs from Tianjin carved brick.
A mini kuaiban clapper polished from real bamboo — a keyring that really clacks.
New Year prints, spring couplets, paper-cut window flowers and Yuanbao red envelopes — an old-Tianjin New Year in one box.
A tea caddy in New Year print patterns with a lidded gaiwan — a gift with a story.
Yuanbao's best friend Yuyu, with gold-thread scales — hug it for a year of plenty.
A Huzhou brush, Huizhou ink stick, Xuan paper and Duan inkstone, with a Master Yuan label and a how-to booklet.
A Jian-ware style hare's-fur bowl, bamboo whisk, ewer and powdered tea — whisk a bowl of Song-dynasty tea at home.
A fret-pattern incense seal mould, ash, incense powder and a small censer — press a single unbroken line of seal incense.
Pre-order in the Shop Visit the crafts market in Old Tianjin
III · Era Tokens
Every area hides a craft challenge: steady a kite in the wind, line up a woodblock, keep time with a clapper tale. Pass it and you earn an Era Token; collect all six in a hall and you become a new "young keeper" of its crafts — and can claim a real gift in our shop.
No tokens yet — step into a hall and try a craft.
Find tokens in Old Tianjin Find tokens at the Temple FairYoung Heritage Keeper
This certifies that ＿＿＿
has collected all six Era Tokens in Era · Old Tianjin and learned the crafts of New Year prints, kites, folk performing arts and painted clay — carrying the flame onward.
五千Write your name on the certificate inside the hall and save it. Tokens and certificates are keepsakes only and cannot be transferred or traded.
IV · About Us
Five thousand years is a river that has never stopped flowing.
Marks on oracle bones, patterns on bronze, smiling faces on New Year prints, melodies from the opera stage — each generation took them up and passed them on, and that is how we came to be.
Yet many crafts are slowing down and fading: a New Year print must be drawn, carved, registered and hand-coloured; a kite must be framed, pasted, painted and flown; a clay figure can take months to model. Young people do not lack love for these crafts — only the chance to come close.
The 5000-Year Metaverse has one purpose: to celebrate China's living cultural heritage. We visit workshops and stages, gather crafts and stories scattered through time, and lay them out in digital halls anyone can walk into — play first, then understand, and finally want to learn and pass them on.
We visit workshops, stages and historic buildings, learn from inheritors, and record each craft from origin to technique.
With 3D and interaction, colour registration, kite framing and clay painting become experiences anyone can try in a click.
From playing to understanding, from learning to taking a real handmade object home.
Chinese civilisation has continued unbroken for more than five thousand years. That is the whole story we want to tell — and an inexhaustible treasure house.
"Yuan means beginning," says the ancient dictionary Shuowen Jiezi. It is the origin, the source. We are not building a virtual world from scratch, but returning to the source of the culture.
"The four directions, above and below, are yu; past and present are zhou," wrote the philosopher Shizi. Yu is space, zhou is time. Laying the "time" of five thousand years out as a "space" you can walk into — that is our hall.
Legend has it that an old Yangliuqing painter, finishing the eyes on an "Abundance Year after Year" print one winter, saw the boy in the picture blink — and hop off the paper hugging his carp. Since then he has wandered the old streets of Tianjin, chattering in the local dialect, finding new admirers for old crafts.
The carp from that same print, standing for "abundance year after year". Yuyu can't talk but understands everyone: if you lose heart in a mini-game, Yuyu flicks its tail and splashes you a smile.
He says he once headed a Song-dynasty academy and slept nine hundred years inside a bamboo scroll, until the turning page of an old book woke him. Finding fewer people reading, he shouldered his scrolls and set out to teach: the Four Treasures of the Study, whisked tea and incense, and how a great hall rises bracket by bracket.
Museums · heritage inheritors · tourism boards · schools · brands and distributors — we welcome partners to co-build halls, license our characters and trade heritage products.