Headed by Yang Ting, theater director and a former judge of the Emerging Theatre Artists' Competition, the new section is designed to provide young theater practitioners with a platform to create, perform, and collaborate with artists from other creative fields.

"These practitioners and artists from the China Academy of Art may have come from different places, and followed different paths, but eventually, they meet at the granary," Huang says.

Although their journeys have varied, for now they have ended up at the same place, coming together at the granary, a place that once sustained material needs, to create a spiritual home, Huang says.

Contact the writer at chengyuezhu@chinadaily.com.cn