Inheritors of intangible cultural heritage in NW China’s Ningxia create artworks to show support for Beijing 2022

Inheritors of intangible cultural heritage from northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region have created exquisite artworks inspired by the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games and the Beijing 2022 Paralympic Winter Games, hoping to express their support for the Games and present the charm of China’s intangible cultural heritage to the world.

Photo shows a paper cutting artwork inspired by the mascots for the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games and the Beijing 2022 Paralympic Winter Games, Bing Dwen Dwen and Shuey Rhon Rhon, as created by Fu Zhao’e, a female inheritor of the traditional craft of paper cutting in northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. (Photo courtesy of the interviewee)

In addition to producing paper cutting pieces themed on Beijing 2022, Fu Zhao’e, an inheritor of the art of paper cutting, a kind of Chinese intangible cultural heritage, has contributed her efforts towards carrying forward the craft by teaching its techniques to the country’s younger generation. On Feb. 20, the woman gave a class to local children, teaching them how to cut out patterns featuring elements of the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games and Paralympic Winter Games.

Fu said she had always paid close attention to the Games and thought it would be a fantastic idea to present the sportsmanship demonstrated by the athletes during the Games in a vivid manner. Fu believes that by fully tapping the potential of intangible cultural heritage items and their economic value, and expressing the beauty of such crafts in modernized forms, its inheritors can establish a market for the traditional folk arts and expand the space for their continued development.

Guo Jing is an inheritor of leather carving, an intangible cultural heritage item found in Ningxia. To express his support for the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games, Guo created a leather carving work featuring Bing Dwen Dwen, the mascot for the Games that has since become wildly popular amid the national fever for the Beijing Winter Olympics.

“I hope that the leather carving works inspired by Beijing 2022 can make more people want to know about, learn, and fall in love with the craft of leather carving, as well as deepen their understanding of Chinese culture,” Guo remarked.

Meanwhile, Feng Gang, a dough sculpture artist based in Yinchuan, Ningxia, has created dough figurines of the Beijing 2022 mascots Bing Dwen Dwen and Shuey Rhon Rhon to show his support for the Games. Feng said he plans to create dough figurines of Chinese winter sports athletes and that he will continue to spread his knowledge on dough sculptures to more people via different online platforms.