Students visit the Fumei Hat Museum, a private museum in Nantong. [Photo/Nantong Daily]

Nantong in East China's Jiangsu province has seen a double-digit increase in its number of museums over the past decade.

The city is currently home to 31 museums, which house 127,059 collections and receive 4.44 million visitors per year.

China's first public museum – Nantong Museum – has since 2021 organized a variety of exhibitions to attract more visitors. In 2021, it received over 900,000 visitors, 1.8 times the figure in 2020.

Visitors admire exhibits on display at a Nantong museum. [Photo/Nantong Daily]

In the 1980s, the Nantong Textile Museum, the first of its kind in China, opened to the public, and in the 1990s the Nantong Blue Calico Museum was established.

In the 2000s, a number of national museums, including the China Abacus Museum and Nantong Charity Museum, were built in the city.

The China Abacus Museum, founded in 2004 in Nantong, is the largest abacus museum in the world. [Photo/Nantong Daily]

Over the past 10 years, the number of museums in Nantong has increased rapidly, according to Ji Jiaming, curator of the Hai'an Musesum.

For example, the number of museums in Hai'an grew from one to five from 2012 to 2021. In addition to hosting exhibitions, the Hai'an Museum offers lectures to students, helping it attract over 400,000 visitors last year.