Enjoy the Feast of Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritage

Evaluation on All-media Product, Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritage

“Intangible cultural heritage” means different types of practice, performances, expression forms, knowledge and skills and their related tools, materials, crafts and cultural arenas deemed by different masses, groups and sometimes individuals as their cultural heritage. They are the intangible cultural heritages verbally carried forward from generations to generations and honored as the live fossils of historical culture. Throughout the world, the protection of intangible cultural heritages experiences a course of continual development. As early as in 1989, UNESCO (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization) adopted the Recommendation on the Safeguarding of Traditional Culture and Folklore. In 2003, 32nd UNESCO Conference held in Paris adopted the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, causing the gradual development of cultural heritage from being ignored or spontaneous safeguarding in a limited range to the global cooperative safeguarding.

Chinese culture is the only one of the four major ancient cultural systems in the world, which has never been suspended in its tradition and has created a great influence on the progress of human society and world civilization. This uninterrupted river of culture is rich in vast, profound and glorious intangible cultural heritages. As the crystallization of wisdom of Chinese peoples, the creation course of Chinese intangible cultural heritage has always been closely associated with the historical progress of Chinese civilization, reflecting the development extent of human civilization and displaying the wisdom level mankind can reach in ideology and practice. In the development of Chinese civilization, such intangible cultural heritages have built a spiritual home for all the Chinese peoples.

Chinese intangible cultural heritage is the treasured fortune for the mankind and holds a noble position in the world’s cultural treasures. The thinking mode, outlook of value and principles of conduct it reflects draw concerns and attention worldwide. Peoples of different countries and nationalities gradually understand the close relationship between the Chinese culture and the world peace, human harmony and common flourishing, with which they expect the future sustainable development of human civilization.

The Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritage released by Beijing Language and Culture University Press and the World Heritages in China also published by the press in 2008 are companion works, both of which are all-media products, jointly exhibiting the essence of Chinese traditional culture.

Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritage is packed in the exquisite box, containing 10 DVDs, of which each includes 6 episodes, each episode introduces one heritage item in 6-8mins, with a total length of 360mins: HD picture, Chinese-English dual-channel and dual-captions, for free change between 4 kinds of play modes. Enclosed is one book, in 10 units, of which each includes 6 separate cultural items for systematic introduction. The book is prepared in more than 200,000 characters, with more than 300 colored pictures and over 100 knowledge links. It is color-printed in both Chinese and English for reading.

According to the classification standard of China for applying for national intangible cultural heritage, the product is classified in ten categories: folk literature, folk music, folk dance, traditional drama, folk performance, acrobatics and sports, folk arts, traditional handcrafts, traditional medicine and folklore, covering basically all the fields of cultural concepts.

To serve more properly inter-national cultural dissemination and teaching, for the complete product, the following additional standards have been applied in selecting and editing heritage items: firstly, select the items with representative examples of Chinese culture. In the particular screening, give priority to the world-class items for collection. At the present, the product has collected totally 23 world-class items, including “Peking Opera” and “Chinese acupuncture” listed recently in November 2010; however, some items have not been collected, which are comparatively professional, less known to people and less significant for inte-rnational cultural teaching, such as “Manufacturing Techniques for Chinese Fuchuan (Boat) with Water-sealed Chamber” and “Building Techniques for Chinese Wooden Arc Bridge”.

Secondly, stress has been placed on those items which can more properly attract the interests of foreigners and people are familiar with and which are easier to be more adequately displayed through images and to be understood, such as “shadow play”, “acrobatics” and “Tibetan thangka”.

Furthermore, more efforts are made to represent cultural features of different nationalities and places, while the items that are duplicate in subjects or regions are alternatively selected for collection, such as “Humai” and “Mongolian Long Tune”, both of which are the unique music forms of Mongolian nationality, “Xinjiang Uygur Muqam” and “Maxrap”, both of which are the comprehensive music-dance forms in the region of Xinjiang. These are all the world-class intangible cultural heritages, but to avoid duplication, eventually “Mongolian Long Tune” and “Xinjiang Uygur Muqam” have been selected only. Doing so is to completely reflect, in a limited space, the features of Chinese with a huge land, numerous nationalities and diversified cultural elements. Currently, the minorities covered in the product include Tibetan, Mongolian, Korean, Uygur, Li, Dong, Miao and Dai, all over China, including Northeast, Northwest, North China, South China and Southwest.

In the process of particular editing and writing, the product has always carried out the philosophy of international dissemination. For the needs in learning and teaching Chinese language and culture , especially overseas teaching, in terms of video images, the product stresses on admiration as well as focus especially on narration, detail description and correspondence to narration and adequate expression of pictures. For instance, by means of image, excerpt and background music, the difference of style between Kun Opera and Peking Opera is clearly expressed; in the chapter of Techniques for Fan Making, every process and technique is deliberately and vividly represented; For Mongolian Long Tune, with the melodious sound of Matouqin (a music instrument) supported with emotional narration and long-lens picture of vast grassland, all the emotions in such national music are incisively and vividly expressed. Such full-sense experience effect can be hardly achieved with pure language.

The right-away method is basically used in the introductory literature for each heritage item in the product: i.e., first of all, a clear definition is given for easy understanding before the historical inheritance and development status in different regions are brief introduced. To lower the linguistic difficulty and pursue concise, accurate and regular literary style, efforts are made to avoid any cultural quotations with excessively profound connotation and terms with excessively professional meaning. Special attention is given for displaying the process of exchange and impact between Chinese and foreign cultures, disseminating the knowledge of cultural exchange and cultivating the consciousness for cross-culture exchange. Additionally, special attention is also given for expressing the remains of one cultural element in the current life, i.e., the live heritage, so that the learners can, after experiencing the process of tracing the history, come to understand the current Chinese cultural life. For instance, at the end of the Cowherd and Weaving Girl, it is narrated: “even today, the Chinese people still use “meeting on the Magpie Bridge” to describe the long-waited meeting of husband and wife or lovers. While disseminating culture, it also narrates the linguistic phenomena.

In addition, in the manner of writing, the currently popular culture is also frequently represented. For instance, Chen Kaige and his Yellow Earth are introduced in the Ansai Waist drum, and Zhao Benshan and Liu Laogen’s Big Stage in the Northeast Song-and-Dance Duet. In this way, while understanding the Chinese traditional culture, learners also walk into the current life of China and experience the vividness of current culture.

As for the book of the product, tips are used appropriately for further narration of cultural phenomena which may puzzle foreigners. Such tips are controlled in terms of content profoundness and description length. The book provides more than 100 tips covering widely astronomy and calendar, regional customs, important historical figures, references and records, cultural quotations, idioms and terms and other knowledge. Teachers can regulate freely according to the particular teaching conditions. For instance, in the Butterfly Lovers,the cultural background is explained about “girl in boy’s dress. In the Hua Mulan, the important significance and basic connotation of “filial duty” in the Chinese traditional culture is explained. In the Traditional Festivals, such expressions as “Layue” (the last month of lunar year), “Zhengyue” (the first month of Lunar Year, “Jieqi” (lunar terms), “Yangshu” (life time), “Yasuiqian” (money given to children as gift for Lunar New Year) are extensively explained.

The book is arranged in double-column with Chinese and English respectively in each, for comparative reading. The materials of pictures include photograph, paper cutting, clay sculpture, embroidery, puppy, handwriting, sculpting, building, strange stone and other forms for showing, as much as possible, the diversified styles of different regions and different schools. Taking the chapter of Clay Sculpture, Niren （clay figure） Zhang of Tianjin, Lord Rabbit of Beijing, Color Painting of Shaanxi Fengxiang, Clay Dog of Henan Huaiyang, Hand Pinch Libretto, Da A Fu of Wuxi, etc are all displayed in an extremely limited space.

To help the learners with a full picture of the overview of China, in addition to the “Overview of Intangible Cultural Heritage”, the book also encloses “Brief Chinese Chronology”, which provides search for the history or governing powers involved in the product, as well as the “Abbreviations of Chinese Administrative Divisions” and “Map of China” for the convenience of readers in consulting and checking and building up a basic framework of Chinese history and geography.

For the product, Chinese and overseas renowned sino-logists and educationalists of international Chinese language have been engaged as the project advisor, while the video images, pictures, scripts and translations have all be externally reviewed and verified to improve the product quality as a whole. Foreign broadcasters were engaged in dubbing to ensure the pure and original translation language and pronunciation.

Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritage is suitable to for-eigners, interested in Chinese culture, for admiration and self-study, for all the contents are prepared in both Chinese and English, without any restriction on language level. It is also applicable for international courses on culture, for learners can perceive different cultural elements directly through video images.

(The author of the article is the director of Overseas Development Department of Beijing Language and Culture University Press)