A former idle building in a rural community has been transformed into a major cultural attraction for children in the Greater Bay Area.

Recently, the Foshan Children's Museum officially opened, becoming the first comprehensive children's educational museum in Guangdong and the Greater Bay Area to be registered with the national cultural heritage system. It also pioneered a cultural industry operation model that integrates the museum with the local community.

During its nearly six-month trial operation, the Foshan Children's Museum has already welcomed over 110,000 visitors, hosted more than 220 social education activities, and climbed to the top of Foshan's cultural and arts popularity charts.

How did a rural community turn a vacant old building into a regional-level children's museum? The journey began with a single idea and three years of planning.

In the museum's Silk Road exhibition hall, children lean in to smell spices like cinnamon, cardamom, and pepper from open jars. In a neighboring area, a boy stands on the deck of a merchant ship, the ship's wheel perfectly positioned at his chest height.

It's hard to imagine the building was once a long-neglected, idle collective property. The story started in 2023 when Ding Fangzhong, a Nanhai entrepreneur and cultural heritage expert, envisioned building a museum for children.

His idea was simple: to create a museum in Foshan with artifacts, stories, and immersive scents where children could learn happily through interest.

Meanwhile, Guo Jingzhao, Party Secretary of Taiping Community who now also serves as the museum's chairman, was pondering how to transform the community's idle collective property, located near several schools, into a cultural space serving children.

In the second half of 2023, these parallel paths converged. The Taiping Community took initiative, self-funding the transformation of the long-vacant property into a museum. The site covers approximately 900 square meters, with a renovated area exceeding 4,800 square meters, including secondary fire safety upgrades.

Ding Fangzhong's team contributed artifacts, design, and operational expertise, with Ding serving as the museum's director. They brought in the Guangdong Da Zheng Institute of Cultural Heritage Operation and Management as the operating entity, creating a "three-museum linkage" with the Guangdong Da Guan Museum and the Foshan Lingnan Financial Museum, both previously founded by Ding.

The project launched in 2025 and progressed rapidly, entering trial operation on New Year's Day 2026. Centered on the "Silk Road" theme, the museum features exhibitions and courses like "Little Silk Road Merchant," "Little Navigator," "Little Pattern Detective," and "Rising Tide of Foshan: Impression of Taiping."

Display cases are lowered, exhibits are touchable, and full-age accessibility is ensured, embedding the child-friendly "one-meter height" concept into every detail.

Yan Yongshu, Director of the Museum and Social Cultural Heritage Department of the Guangdong Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism, noted its status as the nation's second children's education-themed museum and the first cultural industry demonstration base integrating venue and community operation.

He stated that the deep strategic cooperation of "museum-community integration" breaks the traditional boundaries of a museum, transforming it into a shared cultural living room for the community and a child's first classroom.

Ding Fangzhong expressed hope for its future development into a national-level museum.

Transformation of Idle Assets

The children's museum is rooted in the community it serves. For Dali Town, this project stands as a prime example of revitalizing idle public assets.

Dali has issued measures for two consecutive years to promote the high-quality development of rural collective economies under new circumstances. These measures encourage village collectives to use rural revitalization maintenance funds for micro-renovations of old properties and provide "green channel" policy support for qualifying building repairs.

Under this policy, Taiping Community proactively connected with cultural heritage resources, reaching a deep cooperation agreement with Ding Fangzhong's professional team. They adopted a profit-sharing model to introduce professional operational expertise for the venue, turning idle, low-efficiency assets into liquid capital.

This not only revitalized the space with new commercial and cultural vitality, enhancing asset value, but also established a pathway for converting "dormant assets" into "quality capital," exploring a new approach for activating and sustaining grassroots存量 assets.

Currently, Dali has formed a revitalization model of "government guidance, market operation, and social coordination." Fifty-three supporting facilities in urban communities have been addressed through targeted measures, and town-owned public assets like Jiulong Park have been successfully activated, increasing asset value by nearly 2 billion yuan.

The next step involves applying Taiping Community's experience to 2 million square meters of idle collective property across the town.

Sustaining the Museum's Future

Opening is just the beginning; sustained operation is key. The museum runs on a "profit-sharing model." According to Guo Jingzhao, the community invested special funds from its own resources, while Ding Fangzhong's team provides operation and management expertise, with both parties sharing profits proportionally.

The community actively engaged with the team, leveraging their rich collection resources and professional museum operation experience to implement the "museum plus community" integrated operation model.

Taiping Community also established a dedicated village-strengthening company for the museum's operation. The plan is to use corporatized management to leverage cultural heritage as a driver for study-tourism and surrounding industries, promoting diversified development of the collective economy.

For a rural community long reliant on property rentals, this represents an exploratory shift from a "rental economy" to实体 operation.

The Foshan Children's Museum has become more than a new classroom for children to learn history and perceive civilization. It stands as a new model for the integrated development of public cultural services, community governance, and idle asset revitalization.

This achievement vividly illustrates the concept that "when everyone takes action, results follow." It stems from the coordinated efforts of all sectors of society, the proactive actions of different entities, and resource integration—the community "acting" to revitalize idle assets, the entrepreneur "acting" to contribute expertise, and government departments "acting" to guide and support.

It is precisely through this "government guidance, market operation, social coordination" model that various forces united to jointly create the Greater Bay Area's first children's museum. It is not only a new cultural landmark but also a shared cultural living room for the community and a child's first classroom, achieving a win-win of social and economic benefits.

Visitor Information

Admission for individual visitors is free and does not require prior booking.

Opening hours are from 9:30 AM to 5:30 PM, Tuesday through Sunday, with last entry at 4:00 PM. The museum is closed on Mondays, except for statutory holidays. Please refer to the venue's latest notice for the most current information.