A cat is attracted by the entries of "Color the Forbidden City" activity. [Photo/ifeng.com]

Following the success of Secret Garden, the best-selling coloring book for adults, a series of coloring books of the Palace Museum will be released in China this upcoming October.

The book series bases its materials from drawings and patterns of the Forbidden City. Some of which being the original pattern designs of Qing Dynasty (1636--1912). Other paintings replicate the patterns on the precious cultural relics by veteran employees of the museum. There are even designs which were drawn by the younger staff of the museum..

The staff of the museum tentatively schedules to publish three books separately covering drawings on architecture, decorated patterns of the royal clothing and royal jewelry, as well as patterns of royal supplies. Two of the books are in the process of typesetting.

With the popularity of Secret Garden and Basford's follow-ups, coloring books are no longer seen as just childish recreation in China. But to endorse the new book series, the museum staff conducted an online popularity test.

Under the tag "Color the Forbidden City", the museum issued three black and white patterns featuring the intricate, richly ornamented architecture of its famous structures for people to color and upload onto its official Weibo account July 19th. It took only several days before it received more than 6, 000 praises, relays and comments. Around 200 netizens uploaded their works in succession.

Recently, nine works from all entries have been selected as winning works. Among them, a winner colored the pattern with only a ball-pen in a blue and white porcelain style; someone else used an automatic coloring program on computer; while another winner made embroidery in accordance to the pattern. Prizes had already been sent to the winners by the museum staffs.

Color and architecture are subjects the museum has always wanted to introduce further to the public, according to Guo Ting, social media manager of the museum's Weibo account.

"The Palace Museum thought about publishing colored photos of architectures in the Forbidden City as early as 2008, because they are aesthetically pleasing, but our thoughts back then were not as 'fashionable' as the coloring idea today. Since June, with the popularity of the coloring book, our team thought about trying it with patterns found in the museum," said Guo.

A black and white pattern uploaded by the official Sina Weibo account of the Palace Museum. [Photo/Sina Weibo of gugongweb]

In China, coloring books are enjoying a boom. More and more stressed-out white-collar workers say they want to benefit from the quiet zen that a coloring book can bring. However, some critics stressed that these books are "lack of humanity nutrition", and focus too much on color instead of culture.

Qiao Xinsheng, scholar and professor at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, expressed worries that we may be living in a time of oversimplified, low quality reading material.

"We are in an era of reading pictures, and not words, but without deep and thorough reading, the free thinking mind will be lost. This is alarming. Pictures will fill people's eyes and brains but they may flash by like slides. What will be left in our minds then?"

In this regard, the museum staffs had made full preparations already. According to the publishing company of the new book series, ancient architecture experts wrote brief introduction to all the patterns in the book to make sure that readers can gain more knowledge from reading, all while enjoying the action of coloring.

On Weibo, thousands of netizens promise to buy the book series as soon as it debuts. Meanwhile, some are worried about the price.

"It is an excellent way to popularize traditional cultural knowledge in the country, but if the price of the book is too expansive, many people may miss such a good chance," said @63_summer, a Weibo user.

On this, the editorial office of the upcoming books said that they will certainly take the level of consumption into consideration, and set the right price for the readers.