By Zou Xiang, People’s Daily
For Chinese across the world, the Spring Festival is a time for family reunions, festive traditions, holiday shopping and diverse cultural and tourism activities. Shopping events for festival goods centered around Chinese intangible cultural heritage (ICH) are gaining popularity across China in recent years.
During a recent event in north China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region, ICH inheritors demonstrated a wide range of skills including embroidery, paper-cutting, and lanterns. Local citizens and tourists were also invited to join the hands-on workshops, experiencing the cultural charm of ICH up close. China’s ICH has become part of people’s daily lives, demonstrating the new vitality of Chinese culture.
Compared to the ubiquitous presence of Chinese ICH elements online and offline, some key transformations may trigger people’s reflection on how to protect the cultural heritage.
In Dec. 2024, three Chinese cultural elements, namely traditional Li textile techniques: spinning, dyeing, weaving and embroidering, Qiang New Year festival celebrated in southwest China’s Sichuan province, and traditional design and practices for building Chinese wooden arch bridges, were added by UNESCO to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The three items were included in 2009 in the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding.
The main difference between the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding and the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity is that the former is about cultural elements that face the risk of disappearing.
When an ICH item sees its sustainability enhanced through protection and development efforts and no longer faces the risk of extinction, it will be “transferred” from the former to the latter.
The successful inscription of the three items in the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity marks the first transition between the two lists under the framework of UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. It demonstrated the international community’s recognition of China’s ICH protection efforts.
Over the past more than two decades since China joined UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, the country has made remarkable achievements in preserving and revitalizing ICH, offering Chinese wisdom and solutions to ICH protection and revitalization worldwide.
China now has 44 cultural elements or practices recognized by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, ranking first in the world. The country has enacted a law on ICH, and provincial-level regions across the country have also issued their local regulations on ICH protection, building a sound legal framework.
Over 90,000 ICH representative inheritors of different levels in China are working to keep the country’s intangible cultural treasures alive. China has over 100,000 ICH items of various levels, including 1,557 featured on the national list.
Preserving cultural essence of ICH
Each ICH item is priceless and embodies a profound historical and cultural legacy that is deeply connected to the customs and emotions of local people.
To preserve ICH, a crucial aspect is to carry forward its aesthetic tastes and cultural essence. For instance, the entire process of the Li brocade tradition includes four steps of spinning, dyeing, weaving and embroidering, which take at least three to four months to complete. The intricate process of back weaving and double-sided weaving takes even longer.
This time-honored brocade craft tests patience and craftsmanship. It is essential to pass down the technique itself and carry forward the spirit of diligence, wisdom, innovation, and craftsmanship behind the ancient art.
Integrating ICH into people’s daily lives
ICH is deeply rooted in social practices and people’s daily lives. It is not a static cultural symbol but a dynamic cultural organism.
The Qiang New Year festival is the most significant traditional festival celebrated by China’s Qiang people on the first day of the 10th lunar month every year. The Qiang New Year celebrations incorporate cultural elements such as Qiang customs, traditions, dances, and cuisine.
China has established a national Qiang cultural ecological protection zone, prioritizing the preservation of Qiang culture. The systematic protection and holistic preservation have laid a solid natural, cultural and social foundation for preserving the authenticity of the Qiang customs and promoting the inheritance of the Qiang culture.
Through years of efforts, China’s ICH protection and revitalization have yielded fruitful results, painting a vivid picture of the harmonious coexistence of traditional culture and modern life.
For example, Li brocade has become a “brocade of happiness” that creates more job opportunities and drives income growth for local people. The Qiang New Year festival now serves as an “accelerator” for cultural, ecological and rural tourism. Traditional Chinese wooden arch bridges have become “concerto” that showcases China’s achievements in cultural inheritance and natural preservation.
ICH items are the crystallization of the wisdom of the Chinese nation and a vivid witness to the continuity of Chinese civilization.
Whether it is the inscription of the three ICT items in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, the global dissemination of Chinese ICH, or the accelerating integration of ICH into people’s lives, the ongoing process ensures better inheritance and protection of invaluable heritage.
Citizens and tourists learn about the birch bark pyrography making technique of the Oroqen ethnic group at a shopping event for festival goods centered around Chinese intangible cultural heritage (ICH) in north China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region, Jan. 1, 2025. (Photo by Ding Genhou/People’s Daily Online)
People celebrate the Qiang New Year festival in Beichuan Qiang autonomous county, southwest China’s Sichuan province, Dec. 14, 2020. (Photo by Zhao Shicai/People’s Daily Online)
