FansAI x Imperial Kiln Brick Museum | From Resource Competition to Mindshare: How ICH Content Succeeds at the Sensory Level

Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) is becoming a booming business, yet its core communication dilemma remains unsolved.

In 2025, the market size related to ICH surpassed 1.1 trillion yuan with a growth rate exceeding 20%, far outpacing many emerging consumer categories. Post-90s and post-00s consumers contributed over 60% of ICH consumption. On Douyin, ICH short videos garnered 806.5 billion annual views, and over 300 million users purchased ICH products via Douyin E-commerce (Data source: ICH Time-Honored Brands Research Report 2026, Douyin Life Services Industry Report).

These figures demonstrate that young people are not averse to ICH. However, they mask a structural contradiction: while ICH consumption grows, most ICH institutions remain stuck in an operational logic of "explanation" and "exhibition"—treating history as textbook knowledge and cultural relics as display items.

The flaw in this traditional logic lies not in content quality, but in engagement channels. The deeper the history, the less suited it is for a pedagogical approach. The richer the ICH value, the more critical it is to engage visitors at a sensory level first, securing their presence before capturing their minds.

According to TripVivid's 2026 Cultural Tourism Industry Trend Report, industry competition is shifting from resource accumulation to capturing mindshare. Visitor demand has evolved from superficial landmark check-ins to deep value identification: "In the past, we designed projects so tourists could post pretty photos on WeChat Moments. Today, we must think about how to make tourists feel reinvigorated on their journey home." (Source: https://www.sohu.com/a/996564207_120944255)

The key insight for ICH cultural tourism content is clear: the primary mission of content is not knowledge transfer, but sensory experience creation—enveloping visitors before they even realize they are "learning history."

The nation's first AI-powered ICH narrative light-show night market created by FansAI for Suzhou Imperial Kiln Brick Museum represents a complete execution of this philosophy.

The Real Challenge Facing ICH Cultural Tourism Content

The historical weight of Imperial Kiln Bricks has never been in question.

Beginning in the Yongle reign of the Ming Dynasty, each brick required 29 intricate processes and two years to produce. Crafted for iconic landmarks like the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace, it was inscribed into the first batch of National Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2006. Six centuries of heritage are enough to awe anyone who truly understands it.

The issue lies in the premise: awe requires understanding.

When young visitors enter a museum, they are often confronted with a blue brick that looks barely different from an ordinary brick, alongside a lengthy textual panel. Before awe can manifest, visitors have already walked away.

This is a universal challenge in ICH cultural tourism: deep historical roots lacking sensory gateways, high cultural value lacking emotional activation paths, and profound heritage significance lacking a narrative language that appeals to modern youth.

When Suzhou Imperial Kiln Brick Museum partnered with FansAI, they needed more than a few promotional videos. They sought a cohesive content system for night tours: projected onto museum brick kilns and corridors while simultaneously distributed across social media platforms. The offline physical space serves as an immersive narrative environment, while the online channels act as viral media—each activating the other.

The underlying challenge was designing personalized pathways for diverse audiences to step into the same historical narrative.

Content Science Strategy: Multi-Density Narratives for Diverse Entry Points

Communication failures in ICH content rarely stem from a lack of compelling stories; they fail by applying a single narrative density to all audiences.

Some visitors need low-friction sensory hooks before exploring deeper. Others require relatable individual characters to feel historical warmth. A third group requires interactive participation to transform from passive spectators into active storytellers. These three audience segments co-exist both at offline museum night tours and within online social media feeds.

FansAI's approach employs three distinct narrative densities to cover these three engagement paths, rather than attempting a one-size-fits-all solution.

Content Science transforms the judgment of "which content wins in which context" into actionable, systematic design rather than relying on creative guesswork.

Volume 1: Imperial Kiln Brick Legend Story — Suspense as the Entry Ticket

Fantasy storytelling is the narrative language most familiar to youth and the most accessible framing for heavy historical themes. Imperial Kiln Bricks possess a rich folklore tradition—kiln fires, master artisans, secret manuals, and mythical spirits passed down for centuries.

FansAI used this folklore as a narrative starting point, converting historical events into a dramatic series via Chinese fantasy aesthetics. Black cats symbolize fate's trials, kiln fire represents conviction, and secret manuals present unsolved riddles. Visitors do not enter to receive historical lectures; they come to witness tonight's unfolding drama.

Volume 2: Legend of Shen Ling — Empathy Demands a Specific Face

Grand narratives inspire awe, but empathy requires an individual human connection.

FansAI uncovered Shen Ling within the historical lineage of Imperial Kiln Bricks—a Southern Song dynasty female artisan known as Ling Yangzi. Mastering weaving, ceramics, and brickmaking, she created the San Gong Gong Pu (Tribute Manual of Three Palaces). Before her passing, she sealed the incomplete manuscript in a woven pouch with her final words: "You need not remember me; you only need to remember that you have unfinished work."

This statement anchors the emotional core of the film. Shen Ling's story is not a rigid historical archive entry, but a universal human theme of heritage, unfinished duty, time, and memory—allowing viewers 600 years later to experience timeless resonance.

Volume 3: Character Gacha Cards — Interactive Participation Makes Spectators Part of the Story

While the first two volumes establish emotion and resonance, the third solves engagement. Gamified card-drawing (Gacha) is a native digital language for young audiences—converting historical figures into collectible characters and transforming single-way viewing into reciprocal emotional investment.

Characters such as the Flower Picker, Qin Bing, Wu Ciyi, Wang Yanzhao, Han Shuo, and Yu Tao represent specific slices of Imperial Kiln Brick history. Lines like "For centuries, I have waited for someone... perhaps it is you" shift visitors from external observers into active participants in the narrative.

Technical Execution: Workflows Guided by Dual Constraints

This project operated under two critical technical constraints that directly shaped workflow logic.

Constraint 1: Historical Accuracy Cannot Depend on Unchecked AI Generation

Costume errors, inaccurate props, and confused dynastic features cost far more to fix post-generation than researching upfront. Shen Ling's attire required strict alignment with Southern Song textile styles, while Wu Ciyi's attire had to reflect authentic Imperial Kiln kiln-worker garments.

FansAI's workflow embedded historical research as a mandatory precursor to technical execution rather than an afterthought. Six custom LoRA models were trained for historical character roles using open-source base models. Training datasets incorporated historical references under diverse lighting, angles, and styles—ensuring visual consistency in facial features, costume structures, and character tone across fantasy scenes, ink-wash aesthetics, and game card formats without AI drift.

Constraint 2: Museum Projection and Social Media Reels Require Entirely Different Composition Logic

Ultra-wide projection displays and vertical social media video are not simple crops of the same footage. Projections inside museum brick kiln corridors require horizontal composition designs customized for spatial narrative focus, whereas vertical social media content demands distinct information density and pacing.

Using Hunyuan Video for ultra-wide screen generation, aspect ratios were tailored to the physical museum dimensions. ComfyUI combined with LoRA was utilized to redraw real museum physical footage, overlaying fantasy visual elements while preserving brick kiln structures, corridor details, and heritage textures. Pure AI-generated fantasy scenes risk feeling detached when projected in real physical spaces; utilizing actual architectural details as visual anchors secures true immersion.

FansAI utilizes a predictive framework for media performance across channels. Channel-specific rendering logic must be defined during pre-production, not patched together post-delivery. This embodies content science: transforming effective spatial composition into pre-definable parameters.

Strategic Guidance for Cultural Tourism Institutions

ICH content communication is undergoing a foundational paradigm shift.

The old paradigm assumed: "We have great heritage; as long as people know about it, that is enough"—relying on exhibits, text panels, documentaries, and traditional press. Effective during times of information scarcity, this logic fails in today's content-saturated environment.

The new paradigm mandates: content itself must serve as a gateway to sensory experiences—not forcing audiences to study heritage, but letting heritage come alive within their sensory world. Suspense, empathy, and participation are not mere marketing tricks; they are necessary prerequisites for ICH content to thrive today.

According to TripVivid's industry report, "The era of accidental single hits is ending; structured, systematic capabilities are becoming the core asset for long-term success." (Source: https://www.tripvivid.com/deep/46756.html). For ICH institutions, content performance can no longer rely on luck—it requires a reproducible, iterative, and optimization-ready content decision engine.

Matching narrative densities to audience profiles, tailoring compositions to media environments, and pinpointing emotional triggers in historical details can and must be systematized to transition ICH content from occasional viral hits to sustained impact.

FansAI's Roto interactive video platform is pioneering the next step: converting museum projection displays from passive viewing into active participation. By allowing audiences to influence narrative arcs via text or voice, the transmission of cultural heritage is redefined—from one-way instruction to two-way co-creation, enabling people not just to observe history, but to become part of it.