Qingdao Folklore Museum is located within the Qingdao Tianhou Temple at No. 19 Taiping Road, Qingdao. The buildings are part of a Ming and Qing Dynasty brick and wood structure complex that began construction in the third year of the Chenghua era (1467), with a history of nearly 540 years. It is a renowned cultural landscape that integrates folk culture, Mazu culture, and maritime culture.
The museum’s main functions include collecting and preserving folk artifacts, conducting folk research, organizing exhibitions, disseminating historical and folk knowledge, and organizing various folk cultural activities. Inside the museum, there are structures such as the Tianhou Hall, Dragon King Hall, God of Wealth Hall, Hall of the Sixty Jiazi and the Twenty-Eight Constellations, folk exhibition rooms, and a ‘Tianjie Yilin’ street that gathers workshops of paper-cutting, Chinese knotting, bead weaving, crocheting, cloth art, glass beadwork, gourd craftsmanship, agate craftsmanship, calligraphy and painting, gold shell inlay paintings, pyrography, and inside-painted bottles. The museum hosts various folk cultural activities, including folk collection exhibitions, live demonstrations and sales of folk crafts, a weekly folk collection appreciation market every Sunday morning, a weekly themed lantern riddle competition every Saturday morning, ‘Auspicious Bell Ringing for the New Year’ on New Year’s Eve, ‘New Year Folk Culture Temple Fair’ in the first lunar month, ‘God of Wealth Folk Tourism Festival’ on the twenty-second of the seventh lunar month, and ‘Tianhou Chongyang Temple Fair’ on the ninth day of the ninth lunar month. The museum is closed all day on Mondays throughout the year; from November 1st to March 31st, it is open from 09:00 to 16:30 from Tuesday to Sunday; from April 1st to October 31st, it is open from 09:00 to 17:00 from Tuesday to Sunday. The museum is closed on Mondays, except during major national holidays when it is open as usual.
