Inheritors of China’s wonderous intangible cultural heritage

China will hold several colorful activities to celebrate this year’s Cultural and Natural Heritage Day, which falls on June 12, aiming to promote the country’s intangible cultural heritage.

In order to protect these invaluable cultural assets, the country has established a tiered system for its intangible cultural heritage, spanning the national, provincial, municipal and county levels. More than 100,000 items have been registered in the system, and over 90,000 individuals are currently identified as representative inheritors of intangible cultural heritage. Let’s discover the stories behind some of these inheritors.

① File photo shows one example of Yang Huazhen’s many embroidery works. 

② Fu Leilei (R) works on a velvet flower handicraft. (People’s Daily/Yao Xueqing)

③ File photo shows a velvet flower handicraft made by Zhao Shuxian’s team.

④ Photo shows a completed lacquer work. (Photo/Zhang Qiang)

⑤ File photo shows a traditional handmade kite.

⑥ Photo shows a piece of sugar-figure blowing art. (Photo/Zhang Qiang)

⑦ Photo shows clay figurines modelled in the image of the Rabbit God. (Photo/Zhang Qiang)

Yang Huazhen, inheritor of Tibetan and Qiang Embroidering

Yang Huazhen, 63, is a national-level inheritor of Tibetan and Qiang Embroidering, a blend of Tibetan weaving, cross-stitching techniques and Qiang embroidery.

Born in Xiaojin county of the Aba Tibetan and Qiang autonomous prefecture, southwest China’s Sichuan province, Yang inherited this traditional embroidery craft from her family.

She used to be a teacher and a photojournalist as well as running her own photo studios. After the magnitude-8 earthquake struck Wenchuan county in Sichuan in 2008, Yang began to operate an embroidery business to help the victims of the earthquake. She, along with 18 other embroiderers began the project in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan.

The woman incorporates a wide range of themes into her embroidery works, including natural scenery and human activities, as well as unique scenes from Tibetan and Qiang daily life. Her works featuring strong ethnic elements soon rose to fame.

Yang’s handicrafts and designs have inspired some international brands to introduce products adopting some of the elements found in her ethnic-inspired fashion. Her embroidery works have been taken up by over 20 famous brands at home and abroad.

In addition to delivering the embroidering tradition to the world stage, Yang has also taught the inherited craft to local women, helping them to increase their incomes. So far, she has trained 58 apprentices and has provided guided instruction to about 4,000 people, including 500 rural embroiderers in Wenchuan.

Fu Leilei, apprentice of velvet flower-making techniques

The 28-year-old Fu Leilei, who once worked in a factory in Nanjing, capital of east China’s Jiangsu province, is an apprentice of Zhao Shuxian, a representative inheritor of local velvet flower-making techniques, an intangible cultural heritage of the province.

According to Fu, the process for making a velvet flower is quite complicated, as a skilled craftsperson needs to combine colorful silk with copper wires to fashion together the velvet sticks.

Sticking to the traditional handiwork, Fu has begun to incorporate Morandi's color palettes, which have become popular among young people, and new materials such as freshwater pearls into his works, which have come to enjoy great popularity in the market.

In addition to headwear, the young man has also made velvet products in many other forms, including bonsai works and decorative pictures.

A younger generation of people working as velvet flower handicraft makers will contribute to new innovative approaches and ensure the inheritance and continued development of intangible cultural heritage in China, Zhao said.

So far, Zhao’s studio has 16 employees, including seven velvet flower handicraft makers, who were all born in the 1990s.

Pema Dorje, craftsman of Regong arts

This year marks the third year for Pema Dorje, 36 years old, since he started learning how to model clay figurines at an arts and culture company established by a skilled craftsman, Kelsang Tsering, in the Huangnan Tibetan autonomous prefecture, northwest China’s Qinghai province.

Seeking a better life for his family, Pema Dorje came to the company three years ago to train in the traditional craft.

Huangnan is the cradle of Regong arts, a UNESCO-listed intangible cultural heritage, which includes clay figurines.

“We can create high-quality artwork only by taking each procedure seriously, from clay selection and sculpting to wiping and coloring,” said Pema Dorje, who can earn 160 yuan (about $25) per day and receive up to 30,000 yuan in bonus earnings each year, which has helped him to get out of poverty. The man plans to run his own company selling clay figurines after mastering the techniques.

Kelsang Tsering’s company has trained over 100 apprentices just like Pema Dorje. “Five of them are running their own companies,” Kelsang Tsering introduced.

Kelsang Tsering also makes sculptures of plants and animals, among other subjects. His products have been sold in many provinces, including in Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan.

In Huangnan, the art of modeling these clay figurines has gained new vitality and has enabled many people to increase their incomes while remaining close to home.

“At the beginning, I learned the craft to make a living. But now I have fallen in love with the intangible cultural heritage and believe that we can carry it forward,” Pema Dorje said.

Zhang Qiang, director of documentaries on intangible cultural heritage

Apart from the direct inheritors of intangible cultural heritage, directors of documentary films can also play their part in ensuring the inheritance and promotion of these invaluable cultural assets. Zhang Qiang, now in his thirties, is one of these filmmakers.

In March 2020, Zhang became the director of a documentary on lacquer art that was financially backed by the regional intangible cultural heritage protection center in Xicheng district, Beijing.

Over the past year, Zhang visited several hundreds of people, including representative inheritors of the lacquer art, lacquer tree growers, and lacquer researchers located in Beijing and three provinces in China, having recorded the ancient techniques for making raw lacquer.

“The documentary records the entire process for carving raw lacquer for the first time,” boasted Ma Ning, a representative inheritor of lacquer carving, a traditional Chinese folk art.

In collaboration with the center, Zhang also filmed an 80-episode documentary on intangible cultural heritage as well as another standalone documentary on China’s famed culinary culture, having covered nearly 100 different items of intangible cultural heritage, including the face-changing techniques of Sichuan Opera.