Their performances are often funded by the local government and admission is free.

"Audiences are picky now. They don't just want to watch good operas, but they want to see star performers as well," Hou says, adding that they have to produce better works to meet people's ever-growing cultural needs.

The average age of Hou's opera team is 30. Last year, they staged about 150 school performances. "As we become more confident about our culture, more young people take traditional culture as a fashionable trend and become promoters of their own culture," says Hou.

Fang Qin, director of Hubei Provincial Museum and a delegate from Hubei province to the congress, says that the report delivered on Sunday lifts the importance of culture to a new level.

"Cultural development is an important part of Chinese modernization mentioned many times in the report," says Fang.

As a museum director, Fang witnessed the rising popularity of museums in the past decade.