Origin Story
It took 100 rejected pitches to understand what British audiences actually wanted from Chinese lanterns.
The first 99 venues said no. The 100th said yes. But not for the reason I expected.
In 2013, I walked into the offices of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew with a proposal for a Chinese lantern festival. I had spent months preparing—researching the venue’s history, their audience demographics, their mission to connect people with plants. I was ready.
Their response: “This sounds beautiful, but our visitors don’t know what a lantern festival is. How do we explain it to them?”
That question changed everything.
The Cultural Export Trap
I had made the classic mistake: I was selling Chinese culture to British people. But British people weren’t looking to buy Chinese culture. They were looking for experiences—memories, emotions, stories they could share.
The lantern festival wasn’t the product. The feeling of wonder was.
Reframing the Pitch
I went back to my proposal and rewrote it from scratch. Instead of opening with “Chinese lantern festival,” I opened with:
“A winter experience where visitors walk through a transformed landscape of light, discovering stories from around the world.”
The lanterns became the medium, not the message. The culture became the experience, not the explanation.
Kew said yes. That first festival drew 80,000 visitors in six weeks. The next year, we expanded to three cities. Within five years, Lightopia was running in 15 cities across four countries, with 2.65 million total visitors.
The Lesson
Cultural export isn’t about teaching people your culture. It’s about creating experiences so compelling that culture becomes the natural language of the experience.
People don’t buy culture. They buy transformation.
About Ian Xia: Cultural strategist, founder of Lightopia and Immersia, and architect of CAAP™ (Culture As A Product). Ian helps cultural organizations and creative entrepreneurs take their IP to international markets.