The 2016 Palace Museum calendar. [Photo/Sina Weibo]

The sales performance of the 2016 datebook published by the Palace Museum stands out at the end of 2015. More than 50,000 volumes were sold on Singles Day since it hit the shelves in September and it has become the best-seller among the art books on Jingdong, an online marketplace.

The 2016 calendar's theme is "Joyfulness in Peace and Prosperity", for 2016 is the Year of the Monkey and the monkey stands for "lively" and "witty" in Chinese culture. The designers expect the calendar to add a spoonful of joy to people's daily lives, by gathering those happy and vivacious theme paintings collected by the Palace Museum in the datebook. Inside the calendar, information about the seasons, months and weeks are printed on the front page, and the famous paintings, calligraphy, cultural relics of the Museum on the back.

Since 1932, the Palace Museum calendar had been published each year. But it came to stop because the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression interrupted the publication. Since then, the Palace Museum datebook has been in a state of "dead" for 72 years before being revived in 2009. And since 2012, color printing has been applied in the calendar design, which makes the datebook develop into a more delicate art work. From 2013, the calendar has become more coherent with a clearer theme for each year.