Gansu Museum's goofy 'green horse' plush turns a national treasure into a sold-out meme

Gansu Provincial Museum's greatest treasure is the Bronze Galloping Horse Treading on a Flying Swallow, an Eastern Han work that doubles as China's official tourism logo. But for most visitors the relic was a distant, textbook-perfect icon. The museum's cultural-creative team set out to close that distance with products young people would want to own — and decided the way in was the horse's face.

Looking at the bronze from the front, the horse appears to wear a slightly goofy, open-mouthed expression, and the design team leaned into it. Working under the 'Shenma laile' (the god horse is coming) IP created in 2020, the team released plush toys in June 2022 with the grin exaggerated into an 'ugly-cute' cartoon face — a standing pose named Yima Dangxian (leading the pack) and a running pose named Madao Chenggong (instant success), each trampling an innocent swallow. A team of about forty, mostly in their twenties, shaped a toy that felt like a meme rather than a museum replica.

The timing amplified the idea: the toy's nickname 'green horse' (绿马) sounds like the COVID-era 'green health code', giving it a second layer of meaning, and visitor-shot clips on Douyin spread during a late-June weekend. The first batch of only 3,000 units sold out almost immediately, the museum's official Taobao store hit No. 1 on its popularity and sales charts, and pre-orders stretched to roughly three weeks.

What began as a cautious test became a phenomenon: monthly online sales passed 10,000 by 29 June, and the team head reported that more than 100,000 plushies were sold in the first three months, with summer visitors to the museum almost doubling. Museums elsewhere had made relics cute before, but Gansu's version proved that embracing a national treasure's funny side could turn heritage into a product people actively hunted for.