China’s intangible cultural heritage goes online, gains new vitality
By
Zheng Haiou and Qing Yuan from People’s Daily
More
and more inheritors of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) in China are taking
it to online platforms to integrate ICH into modern life, in an attempt to
attract more public attention on and consumption of ICH-related products, win
people’s respect for their wisdom and craftsmanship, and showcase the charm of cultural
heritage.
Qiao
Xue, a young inheritor of handmade leather art, an item of the ICH list of Yinchuan
city in northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, opened an account on short
video platform Douyin, also known as Tik Tok last July to show her
expertise in leather carving. In less than a year, Qiao has hosted nearly 60 livestreaming
shows on the platform, selling handmade leather products totaling two million
yuan (around $282,789), with the highest turnover created in a single
livestreaming show hitting 450,000 yuan.
A
project aiming at better promoting and inheriting ICH was launched on Douyin in
April 2019. According to the platform, more than 40 ICH inheritors
participating in the project had gained over a million followers in the past
year.
So
far, clips uploaded on Douyin have featured 96 percent of China’s national
intangible cultural heritage projects, or 1,318 items. The number of videos
related to intangible cultural heritage programs posted on the platform has hit
48 million, with more than 200 billion views and nearly 6.5 billion likes.
On
June 13, China’s Cultural and Natural Heritage Day, the country’s
Ministry of Culture and Tourism (MCT) launched a series of online
promotional events for ICH, broadening the way of ICH protection, inheritance
and development.
Diversity
was a major highlight of the promotional events. Over a thousand ICH
documentaries and feature films were played online, and online discussions
about ICH were joined by both internet influencers and young icons. Besides,
livestreaming platforms invited users to share their stories about ICH, and
e-commerce platforms jointly held an online shopping festival to promote the
sales of ICH products.
Many
Chinese internet platforms, such as Tencent Video, Iqiyi, Douyin, Kuaishou and Sina
Weibo, have recently launched characteristic ICH sections to showcase relevant
videos and images.
Tencent
Video, for example, focusing on Chinese cuisine, launched food documentaries such
as Breakfast in China and Flavorful Origins to display the charm of traditional
Chinese food listed as ICH items.
Its
rival Iqiyi created documentary series on ICH items that are frequently seen in
movies and TV dramas, including embroidery, velvet flower, Kunqu opera and Peking
Opera.
Douyin
used a combination of short videos and livestreaming to showcase ICH items such
as traditional Chinese oral stunts and Guqin, a seven-stringed
plucked musical instrument in some ways similar to the zither, in
an attempt to encourage its users to participate in online discussions and
share their own stories about ICH.
The
young generation represents the future of ICH. The promotional events, staged
online in youth-friendly formats and inviting innovative, pioneering and
fashion-sensitive youth representatives, has found a more trendy approach to
promote ICH.
Sina
Weibo invited celebrities, online influencers in culture and art, and ICH institutes
across the country to join hotspot topics, calling on the young people to pay
more attention to ICH protection by sharing stories about ICH, introducing
splendid ICH items, and improving public ICH literacy.
Kuaishou,
a popular Chinese short video and livestreaming platform, launched ICH-related
hashtags to encourage more young craftsmen to display the making of ICH
handicrafts in a more youth-friendly way.
In
an effort to introduce more ICH resources to e-commerce platforms and establish
a new chain linking ICH production and consumption, e-commerce platforms
including Alibaba, JD.com, and Pingduoduo jointly held a shopping festival to
promote the
sales of products related to ICH with the support of the MCT, the Ministry of
Commerce (MOFCOM) and the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty
Alleviation and Development.
Nearly
6,500 online shops across the country joined the festival, selling over 80,000
kinds of products related to around 4,500 ICH items. It is reported that an ICH-themed
livestreaming marketing held in Nanchong, southwest China’s Sichuan province garnered
over 30 million yuan in just four days.
As
COVID-19 prevention and control becomes regular in China, online events are a
new trend, and to host ICH-themed shopping festivals is also an important
measure for the country to advance poverty alleviation during the COVID-19
epidemic, said an official with the MCT.
So
far, the country has established over 2,000 ICH poverty-relief workshops covering
more than 2,200 ICH items. These workshops have offered training for nearly 180,000
people, created about half a million jobs and lifted over 200,000 impoverished
households out of poverty.

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