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Intangible cultural heritage goes public

Author  :  Ma Qian     Source  :    China news     2014-06-30

Yunnan Province, home to the largest number of ethnic minorities in China, exhibited selected items for the UNESCO intangible cultural heritage list. According to the Department of Culture in Yunnan Province, its capital Kunming held a Traditional Crafts of Intangible Cultural Heritage exhibition from June 14-17. The exhibition aims to publicize intangible cultural heritage and make them accessible to the public.

In 2006, the government established a national Cultural Heritage Day to be celebrated annually on the second Saturday of June. This year’s Cultural Heritage Day fell on June 14. Yunnan Province selected 24 items of intangible cultural heritage at the state and provincial levels to be presented to the public under the theme “Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection and Urbanization.”

The exhibited crafts include smelting, forging, carving, brocading, embroidery, pottery, bamboo weaving, medicine, tea making and more. At the exhibition, visitors could participate on the crafts to see for themselves the charm of intangible cultural heritage.

“We hope that by seeing live demonstrations by masters of various crafts, visitors can experience the unique glamour of traditional culture,” said Lan Mingxian, an official from the Department of Culture in Yunnan Province. “Letting people know, understand and participate is the best way to pass on and safeguard cultural heritage.”

Besides the traditional crafts exhibition, Yunnan Province will launch several other activities, including shows of ethnic songs and dances, art exhibitions, Yunnan Opera Week, cultural relics evaluation consultation and more to enhance public awareness about intangible heritage protection. They endeavor to make Cultural Heritage Day an important platform for defending the spiritual home of all peoples, demonstrating and disseminating knowledge pertaining to intangible cultural heritage.

Yunnan is among three pilot provinces in an intangible cultural heritage protection program. Currently, it has 90 items approved for intangible cultural heritage listing at the national level and 299 at the provincial level. It also has 69 representative inheritors of national intangible cultural heritage and 824 representative inheritors of provincial intangible cultural heritage. Diqing and Dali are two national eco-cultural protection areas. The Dai ethnic group’s paper-cutting and the Tibetan Epic Gesar have been listed in the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

 

 

  Translated by Du Mei

  Revised by Tom Fearon

Editor: Chen Meina

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