The archive · PR & Stunts · Marketing decision · 2021–2022
UnionPay's 1km 'Poetry Great Wall' prints children's poems — 370M Weibo reads, award gold
UnionPay blew its poetry-POS receipt up 10,000 times into a 1,000-meter 'Poetry Great Wall' on a Fujian grassland — 15M stream views and a 数英奖 gold.
China UnionPay (中国银联)
What it had to solve
Since 2019, UnionPay's Poetry POS machines had printed a child's poem on the receipt for every ¥1 donated by mobile payment. Entering its fourth year, the public-welfare IP needed a new creative form that could carry the children's poems to a much larger audience.
How it works
In 2021, China UnionPay built its 'Poetry Great Wall': the company's charity receipts — each one carrying a poem written by a child in a mountain village — were magnified 10,000 times and stretched into a wall roughly one kilometer long along the visitor boardwalk of Yuanyang Grassland in Fujian. Four beacon towers along the wall housed rebuilt POS machines where visitors could still pay ¥1 and receive a printed poem, keeping the original 2019 idea alive inside the landmark.
The wall turned a metaphor into a place: the Great Wall's ancient meaning of 'protection' was reused to say the public should protect children's inner worlds, and visitors walked through the poems themselves instead of reading about them. Around the installation, UnionPay staged a live broadcast with Xinhua, released an 'Echoes from the Mountains' H5 where listeners could leave their own audio responses, and printed poems on LELECHA cup sleeves to carry the work into city cafés.
The numbers were large even for a charity campaign: 15.09 million combined views for the teaser and live broadcast, 370 million reads and 117,000 discussions on the Weibo topic, and more than 97 million online exposures. International news agencies including AP, EFE and Kyodo picked up the story. The project won a gold at the 2022 数英奖 in the interactive scenario category, and by its fourth year the broader Poetry POS IP had funded art-education classes for nearly 5,000 children.
Why it lands
- It used UnionPay's own payment ritual — the POS receipt — as the creative unit, so the brand's core business was the medium.
- The 10,000x enlargement turned a paper slip into architecture, giving an intangible cause a physical place people would travel to see.
- The children's own poems framed them as poets with something to say, not as objects of pity.
- Every layer of the campaign — wall, machines, live stream, H5, cup sleeves — looped back to the same act: pay a yuan, receive a poem.
What it did
The teaser and live broadcast drew 15.09 million total views; the #中国银联诗歌POS机# Weibo topic accumulated 370 million reads and 117,000 discussions, with more than 97 million total online exposures. AP, EFE and Kyodo and hundreds of overseas outlets covered the wall, and the project won a gold at the 2022 数英奖 (Digitaling Awards) in interactive scenario creativity; by its fourth year the IP had put nearly 5,000 children through funded art-education classes.
What you can take
Scale a small, meaningful object into an unmissable physical landmark: the 10,000x receipt made a donation terminal's output into architecture, so the cause itself became the tourist attraction.
Since then
The wall remained in the landscape after the campaign and the scenic area kept the structure, repurposing it into a red-draped landmark during the National Day holiday, when visitor numbers grew 10 percent and revenue nearly 60 percent in the first three days. The Poetry POS IP continued into further years, and the project was entered for the 金松奖 (Golden Pine) rural digital-development award, consolidating UnionPay's most decorated charitable campaign.
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