Highlights of 2025 Sun Festival: Special Exhibition of the Ancient Greece, Panorama Musical, World Heritage Lantern Show, and More…

Release Time: 2025-01-22

From January 27 to February 12, 2025, the Chengdu Jinsha Sun and Immortal Birds Festival (hereinafter referred to as the Jinsha Sun Festival) will be held at the Jinsha Site Museum. The audience can expect a series of Chinese new year elements, including cultural relics exhibition, lantern show, flower market, performances and delicious food.

“Arrival” of the Gods of Ancient Greece

The special exhibition “Ancient Greece: Mythology Heroes and Destiny” has opened on January 20th and will last until May 18th. Jointly hosted by the Chengdu Jinsha Site Museum and the Regione Puglia, the exhibition will bring together 119 representative exhibits from nine institutions in the Puglia region of Italy, including sculptures, painted pottery, coins, bronzes, glassware, etc., and vividly present the geography, production and life, architectural achievements, and culture and art of the Ancient Greece period, based on the clues of worship of the ancient gods and the six deities of the Ancient Greece.

During the Sun Festival, the cultural experience will be extended to the park area. The audience may deepen their knowledge and understanding of the ancient Shu civilization, as well as to experience the beauty of harmony and difference, by appreciating “Greek Parthenon” large-scale lantern, shopping 65 models totaling more than 5000 pieces of  Ancient Greek cultural creations, and encountering the costumed “Goddess Athena” in the exhibition hall.

Panorama Performance of Jinsha Musical

Inspired by the Jinsha culture, the Jinsha musical (below as “Jinsha”) was created by famous musicians San Bao and Guan Shan, which not only interpreted the ancient Shu civilization and the brilliant history of Chengdu, but also opened the era of “Made in China” musicals. On April 8th, 2005, “Jinsha” had its premiere in Beijing Poly Theatre, starring famous singers such as Sha Baoliang, Tan Weiwei and Yao Beina.

“Jinsha” has been widely known in recent years by being performed on professional art shows, such as National Treasure by CCTV, Super-Vocal, Singer, etc.

During the Sun Festival, the Jinsha Site Museum will perform “Jinsha” daily in a panorama way, during several time slots and in various scenic spots inside the Jinsha Site Museum, such as Chinese Cultural Heritage Memorial Sculpture, The Ebony Wood, Ritual-Themed Lantern Set and the Relics Hall. Some featured segments of “Jinsha” including “Dream of Jinsha”, “Who is He”, “Wish”, “Love Song Being Forgotten”, “The Day Will Come” are specially picked to tribute to the classical.

Large-scale Lantern Set Interpreting “World Heritage”

During this year’s Sun Festival, the museum will present a lantern show called “Light of the Sun”. The park area is divided into four sections: Ancient Shu Culture, Heritage Grand View, Sun Worship, and Fortune Snake Welcomes Spring. In particular, the 200-meter-long “Heritage Grand View” lantern set takes the world cultural heritage elements of the four ancient civilizations of China, Egypt, Maya and Greece as its core, supplemented by the characteristic artifacts, buildings, flowers and plants of each country, creating a long scroll of civilization for the audience on the main road, and focusing on the Great Wall, Sphinx, Pyramid, and Parthenon.

In addition to the “Heritage Grand View”, the audience can also experience the ancient Shu sacrificial scenes reproduced in the form of colored lantern art expression under the 10-meter-high ancient Shu altar lantern set, and learn how the ancient Shu people used bronze masks, ivory, the Sun and Immortal Birds and other precious artifacts in their rituals. The traditional sacrificial activities of the Jinsha Sun Festival will also be combined with the restoration of the ancient Shu altar for the first time, creating a more vivid and solemn ancient Shu sacrificial ceremony for the audience.

See Golden Snake Delicates Rui (Lucky) in Jinsha in Chinese New Year

The Jinsha site has unearthed more than ten three-dimensional round carvings of stone snakes and one piece of gold foil with snake motifs. The stone snake is in the shape of an “S”, with a fantastic body, black eye sockets, and red cinnabar painted inside the eyes and mouth.

Compared with the stone snake, the gold foil is more “abstract”, with the whole is a rounded trapezoid, the central engraving two circles like a snake spiral pattern, the head in the center, and the snake’s tail in the outermost. Its front side is polished, relatively bright, while the reverse side is not, comparatively rough. Experts speculate that it might be used for decoration.

During the Sun Festival, Jinsha will join hands with The Cultural Relics Publishing House and more than 50 domestic culture and museum units to organize the “Golden Snake Dedicates Rui - Year of the Snake Chinese Zodiac Cultural Exhibition”, which will feature hundreds of artifacts and images of snake themes from different periods and regions. Combined with the traditional art of colored lanterns, the exhibition will incorporate elements related to the snake culture into the design of the lanterns and the audience’s interactions, demonstrating the profound connotation of the snake in Chinese traditional culture.

In addition to the above four highlights, during the 2025 Jinsha Sun Festival, there will be other exhibits related to intangible cultural heritage inheriting, flower art, and panda cultural creation competition, and separate the site into several sections as children’s playground, intangible cultural heritage experience, parent-child social education and gourmet world, etc. to entertain all audience in Jinsha.

(志愿者刘君然译）