Since it opened, “Journey to the West,” the West Lake Cultural Experience for Teens held at the West Lake Museum, has set out to be fun to wander, fun to play, and things to learn from. Through four perspectives, the sights and scents of the four seasons, game-based challenges, and immersive experiences, it invites young people to move from bystanders to custodians of West Lake’s cultural heritage.

The show moves through spring, summer, autumn, and winter, paired with sight, smell, taste, sound, and touch: the layout of the lake’s “two causeways and three islands,” the fragrances of each season, the craft of incense sealed under heated ash, a Song-style family banquet of the fish soup, Dongpo pork, and crab-stuffed oranges, and the poems and folk rhymes of the West Lake. In the final chapter, children stamp the last mark at the “Wansong Academy,” unlocking a West Lake experience pass—and stepping out of the gallery to read the lake’s thousand-year story for themselves.

Each of these deep-dive study sessions into West Lake’s Song heritage has drawn not only praise, but something more moving. Inside the gallery, a kid voiced the simplest wish of all: “Can I come back and play again?” A single sentence from a child says more than a thousand words—and it is the warmest footnote this exhibition could have.

To help more kids discover the lake culture and experience this one-of-a-kind exhibition, a new “Journey to the West” study program and study routes are about to launch. The courses include “Emperor Gaozong’s Retired Life,” “Legend of Su Dongpo,” “Be a Song Dynasty Tea Art Master for a Day,” “What Secrets Are Hidden in the Ten Scenes of West Lake?,” “Blending a Song Scholar’s ‘Luxury Fragrance’,” “Flavors of West Lake,” and “Repairing Porcelain for the Emperors”—reaching young people, museum enthusiasts, and international students alike, and carrying the cultural experience out of the gallery and into the lakes and hills.

From gallery to lake, from “seeing” to “experiencing,” it brings young people closer to the West Lake culture through touch, listening, and reflection. Using museum education to connect the lake and its hills, the exhibition’s endpoint is, in fact, where cultural inheritance begins.