[Ma Zhiyao, Liu Zhiying, Liu Yaoyao] Several key issues in the protection concept of intangible cultural heritage in China
Abstract: The protection and development of China's intangible cultural heritage has gone through five periods: from start to development, to promotion and acceleration period, to stability and reflection period and the current "power" period.
The protection of intangible cultural heritage has gradually deepened in practice, from protecting intangible cultural heritage to focusing on the improvement of the abilities of inheritors, to helping them develop and grow in practice.
The intangible cultural heritage research and training program aims to enable inheritors to gain cultural confidence, and the team of intangible cultural heritage brokers or cultural intermediaries can also assist in the promotion and innovation of intangible cultural heritage.
In recent years, the public cultural attributes of intangible cultural heritage have been continuously enhanced and have gradually attracted the attention of local governments.
However, intangible cultural heritage in the modern industrial context has also caused manual labor to face the crisis of mass production.
Therefore, more attention must be paid to scarce intangible cultural heritage projects.
The concept of intangible cultural heritage protection of creative transformation and innovative development needs to become the consensus of the whole society.
Keywords: Intangible cultural heritage; public culture; cultural intermediaries; Intangible cultural heritage assessment standards
The protection of intangible cultural heritage is a process of long-term interaction between man and society.
This process is shifting from a national cultural hot issue to a national cultural undertaking, thus allowing the protection concepts and principles of intangible cultural heritage to be continuously developed and improved, and in the specific promotion of intangible cultural heritage work, we will continue to feed back and rectify it.
The concept of intangible cultural heritage protection is like the living nature of intangible cultural heritage itself, and it also requires "living" adjustment.
Only by continuous thinking and adjustment of protection concepts can the concept of intangible cultural heritage protection and practice complement each other and achieve win-win results.
Therefore, in order to do a good job in the current intangible cultural heritage protection, it is necessary for us to review the concept of intangible cultural heritage protection, combine the new problems and new phenomena emerging in current practical protection, and based on my country's policy environment for intangible cultural heritage protection, and put forward some constructive thoughts.
Provide reference for current intangible cultural heritage protection work.
I.
The protection and development context of intangible cultural heritage in contemporary China
The protection of intangible cultural heritage in China has been going on for 19 years, and the understanding and protection concept of intangible cultural heritage have also been constantly changing over the past 19 years.
If we make a historical review, we can roughly divide the protection of intangible cultural heritage into five stages:
2001-2003 2009 is the initial stage of the protection of intangible cultural heritage.
Marked by the fact that Kunqu Opera was selected as the "Representative of Human Oral and Intangible Cultural Heritage" in 2001, scholars have since devoted themselves to this new research direction.
On May 18 of the same year, UNESCO announced the first batch of "Representative Works of Oral and Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity", and 19 representative works, including my country's Kunqu Opera, were approved.
Since then,"intangible cultural heritage" has entered the academic field of vision as a specific professional academic term.
Entering the keyword "intangible cultural heritage" on China Knowledge Network for query, journals, papers, press releases, meeting minutes, interviews and other documents showed 305 articles in 2001, 611 articles in 2002, and 1097 articles in 2003 respectively.
Through sorting out and studying the literature of the past three years, the author found that "intangible cultural heritage" emerged as a new hot word during this period, academic research was still in the stage of enlightenment and exploration, lacking relatively comprehensive understanding and profound accumulation, and poor academic autonomy and independence.
It is often an international organization, government, society or local area that introduces, promulgates, or declares a task or event, and scholars and experts compete to study it.
2004-2006 2009 is the enlightenment stage for the protection of intangible cultural heritage.
The most significant event during this period was the adoption of the 2004 UNESCO Convention for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of China.
It was this resolution that sounded the clarion call for the protection of intangible cultural heritage in China.
In 2006, as the government launched a series of policies and plans related to intangible cultural heritage protection, such as the announcement of the first batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage lists on May 20 and the establishment of "China Cultural Heritage Day" on June 10, etc., Intangible cultural heritage protection began to receive widespread attention.
This concern radiates to various colleges and universities, and professional education on intangible cultural heritage has become a hot topic.
2007-2011 2009 is the promotion and acceleration stage of the protection of intangible cultural heritage.
2007 was of great significance to the protection of intangible cultural heritage in China.
At this time, China's intangible cultural heritage began to take the initiative to go abroad and the world, holding various performances.
During this period, the protection subjects performed their respective duties and were proactive, and the protection of intangible cultural heritage was carried out in multiple ways.
In 2011, there were many theoretical studies on the practice of intangible cultural heritage protection, especially paying more attention to public cultural institutions such as museums, libraries, archives, and science and technology museums, and reflecting and exploring the theories summarized and refined in the practice of intangible cultural heritage protection., trying to point out the direction for the role of public cultural institutions in the dissemination and inheritance of intangible cultural heritage.
As a university undertaking the tasks of organizing intangible cultural heritage, research and academic exchanges, it has also begun to carry out various aspects of education, training, publicity and promotion.
The promulgation of the "Intangible Cultural Heritage Law" allows us to clarify the difference between preservation and protection of intangible cultural heritage.
How to preserve it has become a question that needs to be considered by the academic community.
As a result, digital protection as the most effective, convenient and scientific method has become a hot issue in academic research.
2012-2015 2009 is the first year of the "post-cultural heritage application era", and it is also a period of stability and reflection for intangible cultural heritage protection.
The craze for cultural heritage applications has gradually subsided.
The main hot keywords involved in this stage include productive protection, ecological protection, intangible cultural heritage industrial development, tourism development, etc., as well as the "Intangible Cultural Heritage Law" promulgated in 2011.
During this period, the practical dimension of protecting and understanding intangible cultural heritage received increasing attention, and the hot word "productive protection" frequently appeared in academic discussions.
The distinction between intangible cultural heritage industrialization and intangible cultural heritage industrial development has become a hot topic of attention.
At the same time, the economic attributes of intangible cultural heritage have attracted more attention, reflected in the specific integration of the tourism industry and intangible cultural heritage.
Regarding the protection of intangible cultural heritage, in addition to the improvement of protection list measures and the establishment of warning withdrawal mechanisms, ecological protection has become an important way to protect intangible cultural heritage at this stage.
With the deepening of the protection of intangible cultural heritage, the concept of protection is also undergoing subtle changes.
The "authentic" protection that has always been talked about by experts and protection workers in the past is no longer mentioned.
In the past, the concept of intangible cultural heritage creativity that is, color change no longer exists.
In response to the increasingly obvious musealization of intangible cultural heritage protection work, the rigidity of intangible cultural heritage caused by overemphasizing of original flavor, and the distortion of intangible cultural heritage caused by excessive tourism development and other commercial activities, government departments have emphasized the need to further clarify the guiding ideology, basic principles, main tasks and main status, and effectiveness measurement of intangible cultural heritage protection work.
General Secretary Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with China Characteristics for a New Era and his important expositions on promoting and inheriting excellent traditional culture, achieving creative transformation and innovative development are the fundamental guidance for doing a good job in the protection of intangible cultural heritage.
Xiang Zhaolun, then Vice Minister of Culture, proposed in his speech: "1.
Adhere to the basic concept of seeing people, seeing things and seeing life.
2.
Focus on practice.
Practice is the core of the continuation of intangible cultural heritage and the basic manifestation of the vitality of intangible cultural heritage.
3.
Respect the dominant status and rights of the inheritance group." It can be said that the unity of awareness of cultural heritage protection by the competent government departments and the stipulation of principles for the protection of intangible cultural heritage are intangible cultural heritage protection ideas and wisdom with China characteristics obtained through a large number of practice.
Compared with past protection ideas, intangible cultural heritage protection has not only emphasized protection, but also emphasized the improvement of the inheritance ability of intangible cultural heritage inheritors in protection to help them develop and grow in practical activities.
In the opinion of some experts who have the right to speak, intangible cultural heritage should remain "original" or it will be destruction.
This idea has lasted for many years.
A large number of field cases, a large number of grassroots voices, and a large number of local practices, but this is not the case.
Intangible cultural heritage is mainly active in rural areas.
Its creators are villagers, its users are villagers, and its viewers are mainly villagers.
The "original flavor" of intangible cultural heritage should not be experts 'pastoral poems or landscape paintings.
We need to know that inheritors not only have intangible cultural heritage, but also a life.
The most important thing for them to protect and inherit is to let them live and live well.
When the author interviewed Yang Kuiju, the inheritor of Yongyin Dharma Drum in Liu Jiayuan in Tianjin City, he said: "It's still original.
Look, it can't be passed down without the original flavor.
No one learns it." Not to mention the improvement of techniques and paces, the traditional inheritance method of passing Dharma drums to men but not to women, and passing them inside but not outside is no longer "authentic".
Yang Kuiju said: "Even foreigners accept them! It's so welcome.
Can't the culture of our ancestors be spread abroad?" Tian Wenqi, Qingyin Fa, Tianjin Liujiayuan, said: "As long as you come to study, not only will you not have to pay tuition fees, but I will also give you some small prizes later."
The status of inheritance of the second batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage cursive works further demonstrates that the protection of "original flavor" is impossible.
The original style of straw weaving is straw braid, which is the original prototype of straw weaving art.
Through the weaving of local materials such as wheat straw, reeds, corn husks, and lafik grass, the initial long braid shape is formed.
This process is called Weaving straw braid.
On the basis of straw braids, the process of compiling straw braids through sample drawings provided by the designer is called straw braids.
In Laizhou, the earliest raw material for straw weaving was wheat straw.
Before the founding of the People's Republic of China, wheat straw such as Xiaoshi wheat, mole cricket butt, big red wheat, Xiaomang wheat, and Baisha wheat were mainly used.
Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, wheat varieties have been updated 6 times, and 78 excellent varieties have been introduced and promoted.
With the introduction of new technologies, wheat stems are short and thick, making wheat straw unable to continue to be used as raw materials for straw braids.
In the early years of the Republic of China, the four famous straw products,"Shahe Yellow","Shahe White","Laizhou Saw Blade" and "Laizhou Flower", which had won special awards at the Pacific Panama Expo, had disappeared, and local villagers were forced to continue to improve and change in practice.
Corn husks, another main raw material for straw weaving, cannot escape "bad luck" in the context of the promotion and peeling technology of modern agricultural machinery such as corn combine harvesters.
In order to keep the straw weaving and braiding process alive, local villagers began to introduce cattail grass, Mitsubishi grass, Lafite grass, etc., and even the more common fibrous straw rope appeared today.
Zheng Jinbo, a provincial intangible cultural heritage inheritor, believes that although straw weaving has a history of more than 1500 years, straw weaving, whether it is materials, tools or skills, has changed more in the past 100 years than in the past 1,000 years.
Facts have shown that rigid protection methods are inconsistent with the natural laws of social development.
If we ignore the needs and changes of contemporary life, if the inheritors themselves do not make proactive changes, but have to protect them "original" as envisioned by experts, they will surely be eliminated by the masses and community and rural life.
Intangible cultural heritage that loses its self-blood-making function will fall into trouble once it leaves the support of the state.
Obviously, the principle of "seeing people, seeing things, seeing life" is the foundation of the protection of intangible cultural heritage.
Intangible cultural heritage itself is a part of life and must develop and change in the practical activities of the people to survive.
They themselves are part of the people's labor model and an important part of tradition.
Letting them practice in life is protection and development.
The public will transform and change according to needs, and intangible cultural heritage without practical ability will inevitably gradually lose its vitality.
In the past, experts put forward the principle of "folk production, elite selection", which is a lack of respect for folk culture and intangible cultural heritage.
During a preliminary visit and survey of the dough sculpture skills research and training program for intangible cultural heritage people in China, the more the inheritors are recognized and have a prosperous business, the more eager they are to obtain opportunities for further improvement.
"You don't know, but there were no channels before.
I could only get promoted through my own exploration and evaluation activities organized by some organizations.
In the past few years, I was paralyzed on the kang, waiting day and night to serve me.
Many opportunities have been lost.
Now that I have passed away, I have this opportunity, even if I don't make money for a month, I will still improve myself." This is what Sheng Lewen, a well-known dough sculptor in Wusan Village, Laizhou City, said from the bottom of his heart.
In fact, they are truly the creators and inheritors of intangible cultural heritage.
They have the right to interpret their works and have the right to go out of the countryside to get more educational opportunities.
Governments and experts listen to the voices of inheritors and provide timely guidance and assistance, which is a good idea for the protection and inheritance and development of intangible cultural heritage.
"Folk creation, folk selection" is a more feasible way to protect intangible cultural heritage."A critical stance helps create cultural relics in daily life, and a reflective stance names cultural relics as intangible cultural heritage and gives them a new opportunity to become an integral part of daily life." When our country and people have regarded past traditions as objects to be protected, the development of intangible cultural heritage has ushered in opportunities, and it is even more an opportunity for those who live in them.
The year 2016 to the present has been a period of "power" for the protection and development of intangible cultural heritage, and the "post-application era" has ushered in a stage of accumulation and development.
In 2015, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Tourism, and the Ministry of Education jointly decided to implement the "Training, Study and Training Plan for China Intangible Cultural Heritage Inheritors", focusing on "strengthening the foundation and broadening the horizons" and aiming to use university resources to provide training to senior practitioners or higher-level practitioners conduct training, study and training to achieve cross-border exchanges and promote the protection and inheritance of intangible cultural heritage.
After 2016, the university research and training program has continued, strengthening and promoting the protection and inheritance model of intangible cultural heritage entering universities.
In 2017, the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the General Office of the State Council issued the "Opinions on Implementing the Inheritance and Development Project of Excellent Traditional Chinese Culture"(referred to as the "Opinions").
Intangible cultural heritage appears in the "Opinions" as the task of enhancing the soft power of socialist culture and realizing a cultural power.
Among them, it involves comprehensive inheritance and development of intangible cultural heritage projects, further improving the intangible cultural heritage protection system, implementing traditional crafts revitalization plans, and protecting and inheriting dialect culture.
In the same year, the State Council issued the "China Traditional Crafts Revitalization Plan", which made targeted plans at the national level for the traditional crafts in the ten categories of the Intangible Cultural Heritage List.
It proposed to establish a national traditional crafts revitalization catalog, expand the team of intangible cultural heritage inheritors, and use traditional crafts as the focus of the implementation of the training and training plan for intangible cultural heritage inheritors in China, connecting top-level design with practical practice.
This year, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism issued a notice on special support for opera, trying to effectively solve the urgent and outstanding problems faced by opera.
During this period, the protection and inheritance of intangible cultural heritage appears more calm and confident.
Practical work interacts with top-level design.
Top-level design promotes practical work, focuses on reality and is based on the future.
It not only has overall control, but also achieves key points.
2.
The "public cultural" attributes of intangible cultural heritage
Public culture is "relative to business culture, it is a cultural form formed to meet the common needs of society.
It emphasizes public administrative functions that serve the entire public.
The goal is that everyone participates in culture, everyone enjoys culture, and everyone creates culture." In the continuous protection practice, intangible cultural heritage has gradually begun to be displayed and promoted to the public from the collection-style appreciation of some experts and the museum-style collection perspective.
This is a welcome change brought about by the changes in the principles and concepts of intangible cultural heritage protection in recent years.
This shows that the government and experts have realized that intangible cultural heritage, as a part of people's lives, cannot be privately owned or possessed by anyone alone.
The "public cultural" attribute of intangible cultural heritage is constantly being strengthened, and in fact has become part of the culture of common public concern and "consumption".
For the first time, public welfare cultural undertakings and commercial cultural industries were clearly differentiated in the report of the 15th CPC National Congress.
Subsequently, the principle of state support and protection of public welfare and cultural undertakings was further clarified in the report of the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.Practice has proved that only by taking the government as the lead to prosper public welfare cultural undertakings, taking the market as the lead to develop cultural industries, and adhering to the two-wheel drive of cultural undertakings and cultural industries can a "blood-enriching" and "blood-forming" mechanism for public welfare cultural undertakings be formed.
In addition to the strong support of national policies, local governments have also introduced relevant protection regulations to assist them, and regard the protection and development of intangible cultural heritage as an assessment indicator in the construction of the public cultural service system.
Intangible cultural heritage has become an integral part of "public culture".
Judging from the characteristics of public welfare, convenience and equality of public culture, intangible cultural heritage meets the above requirements.
As Cultural and Natural Heritage Day becomes popular among the people, the public welfare cultural service nature of intangible culture becomes increasingly obvious.
Under such a general trend, we need to make it clear that as carriers of public welfare culture, inheritors of intangible cultural heritage have the responsibility and obligation to cooperate with the government's cultural publicity and public welfare activities, actively open the door to recruit apprentices, and promote excellent traditional cultural skills and memories.
In self-inheritance, it is also necessary to continuously strengthen self-blood-making capabilities, explore market rules, and form a positive and sustainable development trend while improving the added value of culture.
During the author's on-site visit to many intangible cultural heritage activities across the country, many inheritors had their own main businesses or sideline businesses.
Although most of these undertakings were profitable and non-public welfare, they reflected the fact that some intangible cultural heritage protection and inheritance require the market to "replenish blood" and "generate blood." For example, Jiang Baoliang, the municipal inheritor of Dongyang wood carving in Zhejiang Province, has his own processing factory; Sun Yuxing, the provincial inheritor of straw weaving skills in Laizhou City, Shandong Province, usually opens a high-end training studio to feed back the inheritance of straw weaving; Sun Bincong, the inheritor of Maqu sugar making skills, also works in construction engineering.
Whether intangible cultural heritage that goes to the market for profit still belongs to public culture seems to become a problem.
In fact, based on cultural rights and interests, public cultural services can be divided into two categories: basic public cultural services and non-basic public cultural services."Non-basic public cultural services refer to cultural services provided to the public in a low-cost and paid manner in order to meet the growing cultural needs of the people."
A problem in reality is that when intangible culture tends to public welfare cultural undertakings or becomes part of public culture, some intangible cultural heritage with high commercial value has begun to be favored by the market.
For example, some traditional handicrafts have been used in the past.
The price is low, and after becoming a provincial or national intangible cultural heritage, their value has doubled, and some prices are no longer acceptable to ordinary consumers.
Originally, public cultural products have a tendency to continue to develop into high-end luxury goods.
At this time, how to view the commercial and profitable color of public culture is the question we need to think about next.
"Industrialized operation refers to the integration of enterprises and organizations of the same type or industry, from scattered operations to large-scale production operations that are market-oriented, benefit-centered, and industrial production as the standard.
In terms of exerting the industrialization function, the industrialization function of local intangible cultural heritage can be exerted in the form of a creative park." Governments and experts are aware of such changes and the possibility of industrialization of intangible cultural heritage.
At this time, what needs to be vigilant is whether the intangible cultural heritage that has gained market profitability, while constantly innovating and developing, while constantly improving the living conditions of the inheritors, will damage the core value of the intangible cultural heritage as an intangible cultural heritage due to innovation, such as the valuable "handmade" nature carried by the handicraft intangible cultural heritage itself.
It is no accident that the author discovered this phenomenon during his field investigation.
"Li Houhu is a brand among cloth tiger skills, but the business of the inheritor, Teacher Gao Qiuying, is not going well.
One of the important reasons is that after Teacher Gao opened the door to teach apprentices, the apprentices let the 'Li Houhu' brand enter the market., but it implicitly diluted Teacher Gao's business, and they became competitors with each other.
As the original creator of this cloth tiger making technique, she has now become a 'victim'.
It can be seen that under the general trend of intangible cultural heritage protection, the cultural consciousness of artists has been invisibly strengthened, making them realize the value and significance of their original handicrafts.
At the same time, they are also adhering to the traditional craftsmanship, but it is difficult to survive for various reasons in the market.
Under the dual pressure of survival and the market, how to let artists focus on everything and avoid dust on precious handicrafts due to the pursuit of orders and the temptation of the market, resulting in the production of batch and simplified works is worthy of attention and urgent need to be solved."
3.
Sharing of intangible cultural heritage
Today, with the development of new media, intangible cultural heritage has begun to become an important part of new media attention, and public cultural undertakings that benefit from intangible cultural heritage are becoming a spiritual and cultural wealth that can be shared.
However, we have noticed that while all people share the fruits of intangible cultural heritage, the "core value" of intangible cultural heritage itself has begun to lack.
Especially today, when the intangible cultural heritage of traditional crafts has been fully revitalized with the support of various channels, mass production has become the norm for artists to work.
The first is sharing.
Once intangible cultural heritage has entered the public eye, the past situation of "being kept in a boudoir and unknown" has been completely broken.
Intangible cultural heritage that may have been used only in a certain region or ethnic group in the past has suddenly been recognized and used by a wider public.
Through the instant dissemination of new media, they are even recognized by the people of the world.
Sharing has become an important feature of current intangible cultural heritage, and one of the purposes of protecting human intangible cultural heritage is the sharing of cultural heritage, while sharing it while maintaining cultural diversity and development.
There is also a view in the academic community that cultural sharing will cause culture to mutate, destroy differences, and thus develop homogenously.
These concerns are actually superfluous.
Sharing is at the intangible cultural heritage level, not at the non-material level.
For example, as a public art, cross talk shares stage presentation and on-the-spot performance, rather than sharing its professional accumulation; paper-cutting shares the paper-cutting works, raw materials, tools, and cutting process presented.
Take traditional festivals as an example.
Even the most common traditional festival in China, the Spring Festival, is only popular in places where Chinese are present, and there are considerable differences in various places, and each place has its own characteristics.
There are different styles in ten miles, and different customs in a hundred miles.
This is what it means.
This kind of intangible cultural heritage sharing is essentially sharing in the dimension of communication, not in the dimension of inheritance, which is conducive to the protection and inheritance of intangible cultural heritage.
Just imagine, if a certain intangible cultural heritage is really recognized by everyone around the world because of its sharing, then wouldn't this intangible cultural heritage just meet the original intention of protecting and inheriting intangible cultural heritage? Sharing is to let more people know, and only when they know can they have the possibility of loving it, and only when they have love can they protect and inherit intangible cultural heritage.
Second, it is a cultural symbol that goes to the world.
The National Intangible Cultural Heritage Inheritors Training and Training Program currently implemented by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Human Resources and social protection has been implemented for three years since 2015, and more than 110 universities have participated in this large-scale intangible cultural heritage protection and development work.
The implementation of the intangible cultural heritage research and training program has won the hearts of the people.
Students go to colleges and universities, learn from folk art masters, and learn from university professors, broadening their horizons and increasing their knowledge, which all add to the cultural confidence of the artists.
In the research and training plan, universities have adopted flexible and diverse training methods for intangible cultural heritage inheritors in different regions.
Some ancient traditional folk handicrafts have lost their market in the contemporary era, but their superb core technologies still exist.
Through cooperation with designers who are familiar with the international market and through the guidance of marketers, these artists who have mastered the technology have an understanding of future market needs.
After understanding, they will naturally carry out new creations in a targeted manner.
Such examples continue to appear in intangible cultural heritage research and training.
The creativity of inheritors based on market demand can often improve their lives and bring greater stamina to their inheritance.
In fact, in foreign surveys, we also found that overseas Chinese have no less yearning and love for traditional culture than at home.
They urgently hope that traditional culture with a flavor of China will enter the world.
On the one hand, it can alleviate their long-term nostalgia, and on the other hand, it also expresses their respect and confidence for traditional China culture.
Third, privacy conflicts and reconciliation.
There are different categories of intangible cultural heritage, but no matter what category, inheritors all have a common wish that is to rely on their intangible cultural heritage skills to eat and not let the golden rice bowl in their hands become useless props.
Sharing has changed the past private characteristics of intangible cultural heritage, and greater public appeal and inclusiveness have become an important channel for intangible cultural heritage to share.
In the past, the personal information of inheritors was closed and secret, and most of the areas they were familiar with were villagers.
Nowadays, it is not enough to rely solely on word of mouth.
It requires a wider range of publicity and packaging, and the use of e-commerce and the Internet has become inevitable.
For example,"Vipshop + batik cooperative + villagers" is a successful model.
Through cooperation with well-known e-commerce companies, folk handicrafts are pushed to the Internet and sold at real-name prices, which has produced relatively good economic benefits.
Many inheritors have realized that this is a shortcut.
By building Taobao stores and online chains, they actively contact sales channels, which has brought relatively good economic benefits.
Promoting oneself has become the first step to breaking privacy and a successful experience for most intangible cultural heritage inheritors.
From the countryside in the past to the public front desk, the past way of doing it at home and then getting it to the market has gradually become a completely open way.
People enter the daily life of the inheritors through experience and gain recognition of cultural heritage through experience.
At various exhibitions, inheritors are almost bundled with products and can also demonstrate themselves, giving them the feeling of cultural stars.
This is something that was not available in the closed farming life in the past, and it also requires them to gradually adapt to it.
4.
Need to cultivate "professional cultural intermediaries"
The awareness of the protection of intangible cultural heritage is constantly changing and is beginning to be recognized by more public.
The Ministry of Culture and Tourism proposed "seeing people, seeing things, and seeing life" and proposed the word "using" to take the lead.
These insights gained from practice have exceeded the work requirements of "protection first" put forward by some experts in the early stages.
This is a major change in concept.
In the past, experts proposed that the biggest task of intangible cultural heritage protection at present is rescue and protection.
There was little consensus on what to do in the future.
Some authoritative experts even believed that protection is the biggest task, and protecting and continuing to survive in its original flavor is the greatest purpose of intangible cultural heritage protection.
Once someone talks about the creative development and application of intangible cultural heritage, they will be criticized by many parties.
Intangible cultural heritage cannot be moved or changed.
It is the intangible cultural heritage inheritors who are really embarrassed.
In their place, intangible cultural heritage that cannot be changed or improved according to people's needs can only come to an end.
As a result, after receiving various titles, they only became the inheritors of intangible cultural heritage and deprived them of their rights to recreate and develop.
Because once the original "original flavor" of intangible cultural heritage is changed, it may be regarded as a "fake intangible cultural heritage".
But this is actually the "original flavor" of the experts, not the "original flavor" of the participants.
Practice is the only criterion for testing truth.
During field research, at the beginning of the conversation, the most asked question was "What can you bring me?" What can you do for me?" They don't want the original flavor, they just want this culture to be passed down.
Only the ever-changing intangible cultural heritage can maintain vitality and continue to gain vitality through adjustment to the times."The key to protecting intangible intangible cultural heritage is to ensure its vitality, not to ensure that it remains intact forever."
Based on this, relevant state departments have realized the necessity of the development of intangible cultural heritage and the importance of relaxing the restrictions on inheritors, and have introduced various policies, such as the "China Traditional Crafts Revitalization Plan" and the "Rural Revitalization Strategic Plan 2018-2022" Year)"" Training, Study and Training Plan for China Intangible Cultural Heritage Inheritors ", etc.
These major policies have created an excellent environment for the comprehensive development and flexible and mobile survival of intangible cultural heritage.
The self-confidence of inheritors of intangible cultural heritage has been improved and their living conditions have also been greatly improved.
But we must also realize a problem.
Most inheritors are just people who have mastered superb skills.
In a rapidly changing era, it is difficult for them to turn around brilliantly and become market trendsetters at the same time.
Some inheritors who have both mastered technology and marketing capabilities are still very few.
This can be seen from the comparison of some specific cases.
For example, Zhao Wei, the inheritor of gourd carving, has mastered the core skills of gourd carving through family inheritance and is very proficient in marketing.
He has his own "business experience" and will apply for a patent for every slight improvement in the gourd carving tool.
Zhao Wei once proudly told us: "It can be said that more than 80% of the gourd carving tool market has my patents, so as long as they carve, they will inevitably deal with me and know about our gourd." There are high and low gourd carving techniques, which is like "Tao", while gourd carving tools are "techniques".
Without "techniques", intangible cultural heritage cannot "sit and discuss Tao".
It requires tools to assist and present."It is difficult for a clever woman to make a meal without rice." This is the way.
From the initial planting of gourd to the final emergence of cultural and creative products, Zhao Wei had his own specialized technical, production, marketing and creative team.
He would cooperate with the most popular media such as Fast Hand and Douyin.
This benefited from Zhao Wei's early years in the business world.
Experience accumulated over the years.
He can capture the lifeblood of the market as soon as possible, and he also knows the cultural core of "intangible cultural heritage".
He knows that no matter how innovative intangible cultural heritage develops and transforms, its core skills cannot be changed.
No one can turn gourd carving into eggplant carving for innovation, because gourd carving has the core skills and competitiveness of gourd carving.
The inheritors of truly sustainable development inevitably have to cater to the market at the moment of social transformation, but this kind of catering is based on studying the core of intangible cultural heritage.
It is a breakthrough after precipitation and an innovation after fermentation.
In the same way, bamboo carvings of folk art intangible cultural heritage can be made into bicycles, portraits, stickers and other forms, which not only retains the core intangible cultural heritage skills, but also meets market demand.
However, there are also counterexamples.
The author investigated a certain wood carving artist in Zhejiang.
When talking about innovation in wood carving, the artist told the author that due to wood control and rising costs, he planned to replace wood with stainless steel to complete innovation.
This is actually a deviation from intangible cultural heritage development and innovation.
In today's development of intangible cultural heritage, if intangible cultural heritage is to be widely recognized and obtain considerable economic returns, we need specialized intangible cultural heritage professional intermediaries, or cultural brokers, who understand both the market and marketing and love intangible cultural heritage.
They need to have the following qualities: be able to grasp the national demand for intangible cultural heritage products in a timely manner; understand the laws governing the development of intangible cultural heritage; and have awe for the intangible cultural heritage cause.
The addition of such intangible cultural heritage professional intermediaries or cultural brokers will reduce the number of detours for inheritors, and allow intangible cultural heritage inheritors to freely innovate and create themselves, and continue to carry forward their unique skills.
5.
Conclusion
Based on the above understanding, the author believes that the contemporary transformation of the concept of intangible cultural heritage protection has a lot to do with the current creative transformation and innovative development proposed by the central government.
The most important thing is that this concept focuses on the interests of the inheritors as the subject of intangible cultural heritage.
Starting from the people-oriented concept, we can realize that forcing intangible cultural heritage not to change and develop and innovate with the times is irresponsible to the inheritors, ignores the inheritors 'yearning for modern life, and is also irresponsible to intangible cultural heritage.
The result of "dead protection" is to keep the intangible cultural heritage in place without change or development.
What leads to the fact that intangible cultural heritage is divorced from the times, people's lives, and cultural consumption, dragging inheritors who master core technologies into poverty.
The quagmire ultimately artificially accelerated the demise of intangible cultural heritage.Changing the concept of intangible cultural heritage protection, being responsible for history and the times, and for the inheritors is the direction that current experts, scholars and protection workers should work hard.
(This article was published in "Folklore Research", No.
6, 2019.
The annotations are omitted.
See the original issue for details)