In the impression, "Intangible Cultural Heritage is a bit like an old decay, traveling from ancient time and space, and the topics involved in it are very heavy." Either it is listed as "endangered", or it is displayed in a museum for people to see, far from the current life.
When the new and the ancient meet, this dialogue that travels through time and space often has unexpected surprises.
The new generation of non-genetic inheritors, with an unusual insistence on the love of intangible cultural heritage, use modern concepts to dress up the intangible cultural heritage with fashion colors.
They play cross-border and combine many unexpected creative elements with intangible cultural heritage, so that "intangible cultural heritage" becomes a new "national tide" and makes intangible cultural heritage come alive.
Liu Kunting's Douyin, whose short videos usually focus on the details created by clay sculptures, attracts a large number of fans. Photo / Tongguan Kiln - Liu Kunting Douyin number. ▼
There seems to be no standard answer to how intangible cultural heritage "renews".
However, in the era of big data, there are traces of breaking the tradition and using the new tide to inherit the intangible cultural heritage.
At the end of December 2021, Huxiang Geographic reporters, together with Huge Engine, ByteDance Public Welfare, Today's Headline Literature and History Channel and Guangming Network, jointly launched the "New Intangible Cultural Heritage" public welfare action, visited Changsha Tongguan kiln firing technology, Fire Palace snacks, Xiang embroidery and other intangible cultural heritage projects.
These intangible cultural heritage projects have long been famous and "hot" out of the circle. Their way of breaking the situation may provide a reference for the inheritance and development of the current intangible cultural heritage.
01.
"Rejuvenating Intangible Cultural Heritage" Can't Avoid "Hunan Intangible Cultural Heritage"
Under the hot topic of "renewing intangible cultural heritage", the keywords cannot avoid "Hunan intangible cultural heritage".
Hunan Province, which has 137 national intangible cultural heritage representative projects and 306 provincial intangible cultural heritage representative projects, for thousands of years, people have used songs to spread culture, record history with costumes, render life with dance, and inherit civilization with skills... These cultural manifestations of different lineages have converged into a colorful "intangible cultural heritage picture" in Hunan in the long river of history.
How can these once glorious intangible cultural heritage be passed on? How to renew? It is an urgent problem to be solved. Hunan Intangible Cultural Heritage has also chosen to embrace new media.
Douyin "Zaizai HuaYu Drum" occupies the top 1 of the Hunan Intangible Cultural Heritage part. ▼
According to the data in the "2021 Giant Engine Intangible Cultural Heritage White Paper", as of June 10, China's national intangible cultural heritage representative projects reached 1557, of which the coverage rate of Douyin reached 97.94%, and in the past year, the number of national intangible cultural heritage-related videos on Douyin increased by 188% year-on-year, and the cumulative number of plays increased by 107% year-on-year.
Hunan's intangible cultural heritage craftsmen have also joined the ranks.
The top words of the vibrato "Changsha bullet word inheritor Dami" have been used for background music by countless jitter friends when making short videos. ▼
From August 1 last year to July 31 this year, The Hunan Intangible Cultural Heritage, represented by "stinky tofu", posted 549,000 short videos with the keyword of "stinky tofu" alone, with a cumulative playback of 3.9 billion times and more than 84.21 million likes.
It has also become a representative of the snack-making skills of douyin's five most popular traditional skills. The keyword "Hunan Intangible Cultural Heritage" was captured, of which nearly 5,000 short videos were released, and more than 56 million times were played.
Inheritors such as fishing drums, handmade silver jewelry, ancient buildings, clay sculptures, bamboo carvings, enamel, flower picking, and bullet words have "settled" on the short video platform, and their fans rank high among the top creators of Douyin Hunan Top Intangible Cultural Heritage. In the short video, they play cross-border, open blind boxes, add new elements to the inherited craftsmanship, and use more novel means to renew the intangible cultural heritage.
The Douyin "Gomela Group" implants Sangzhi's folk songs into popular elements to create a popular music that belongs to Tujia. ▼
Among them, the "Gomela Group", their brothers and sisters implanted Sang Zhi's folk songs into popular elements, creating a Tujia pop music, and also shined on the "Walk of Fame".
"Tongguan Kiln_ Liu Kunting", is the non-hereditary inheritor of the Changsha kiln Copper Guan ceramic firing technique, the third generation of "Clay Man Liu", his short videos usually focus on the fragments created by clay sculptures, and its detailed appearance impresses many viewers and attracts a large number of fans.
"Changsha Bullet Word Inheritor Rice" speaks the Changsha dialect in a short video, using a funny way to talk about the world. And "Li Youwei" used the three-stick drum to improvise and ridicule the soon-to-be-lost three-stick drum to show it vividly.
02.
The declining fishing drum "caught fire" on the Internet
The appearance of Hunan fishing drums as "net red" is an unexpected surprise.
Two years ago, at the "Hunan Fishing Drum Heritage Protection Seminar" held in Changde, it was mentioned that the representative inheritors of the Fishing Drum of Hunan Are Still Insisting on the Traditional Form unchanged, or Catering to the Market Debate, but in two years, the Fishing Drum has made a choice.
In 2014, the Hunan Provincial Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center integrated the three provincial-level intangible cultural heritage projects of Jiuli Fishing Drum, Qidong Fishing Drum and Lingling Fishing Drum into the "Hunan Fishing Drum", which was listed as a national intangible cultural heritage. Regarding its inheritance and development, the inheritors have been "experimenting".
Qidong Fishing Drum is a traditional folk song art in Qidong County, Hunan Province, originating from the Jianyan period of the Southern Song Dynasty, arose in the early days of the founding of New China, and flourished in the 1970s and 1980s. Experts believe that Qidong's fishing drum singing style and performance techniques have become their own genre, so it is named "Qidong Fishing Drum". Photo: Qidong News Network▼
The Qidong fishing drum of the southern school, which breaks away from the traditional single-mouth fishing drum and joins the local music art, and then accompanies it with musical instruments such as saucers, electronic organs, three strings, and erhu, becomes a new fishing drum performance; the northern school of jiuli fishing drums, which keeps the traditional form unchanged and injects modern elements into the content, develops slowly.
According to data provided by the Hunan Provincial Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center, in December 2014, the fishing drums of 38 counties (cities, districts) out of 122 counties (cities, districts) in Hunan were included in the list of intangible cultural heritage protection at all levels.
But in December 2018, in the data they surveyed, only 20 counties (cities, districts) in the province had fishing drum artists. Fishing drum artists can only meet on red and white happy occasions, and they are already facing the danger of extinction.
In 2008, Qi Dong was awarded the honorary title of "Hometown of Chinese Qu Art" by the China QuQu Association for the prosperity of fishing drums and other music arts. In 2010, Qidong Fishing Drum was listed as "Intangible Cultural Heritage of Hunan Province". Photo: Qidong News Network▼
Two years have passed, how has the development of fishing drums been?
In the two public data, the Hunan Intangible Cultural Heritage part, occupying the top 1 is the inheritor named "Zaizai Hua Fishing Drum", whose number of fans is nearly 600,000, while the top three video views are the works of "Hengnan Fishing Drum Inheritance Jiang Zhongliang", and the most played video is the "Hengnan Fishing Drum Drama" launched on March 10 this year, nearly 3.5 million.
In 2014, the three provincial-level intangible cultural heritage projects of Qidong Fishing Drum, Jiuli Fishing Drum and Lingling Fishing Drum were integrated into Hunan Fishing Drum and were included in the national intangible cultural heritage list. Photo: Qidong News Network▼
From August 1 last year to July 31 this year, fishing drums accounted for nearly 30% of the top 100 videos played by Hunan Intangible Cultural Heritage. This was the highlight of its declaration as endangered. If you use traffic data alone to speak, Hunan Fishing Drum has played a beautiful turnaround battle, it embraces the new platform, not only comes alive, but also "fires".
Like the fishing drum, there are new intangible cultural heritage, such as Lizhou big drum, weeping wedding song, and dong dong gong, etc. People have made these soon-to-be-lost intangible cultural heritage into short videos to spread, which has successfully attracted everyone's attention. Shadow puppets, dough kneaders, paper cuts and other intangible cultural heritage that are getting farther and farther away from people's lives, due to the soaring number of video likes, the distance with people is getting closer and closer.
03.
stinky tofu
"Stinky" comes with a "net red" temperament
In the exhibition room of the stinky tofu craft of the Fire Palace in Pozi Street, changsha, the fourth generation of the stinky tofu making technology of the Changsha Fire Palace, unveiled the brine cover that had been fermented for 2198 days on Thursday, and gently stirred the black-brown brine with a wooden stick, and the smell spread instantly. At this time, the tourists who covered their mouths outside the door raised their mobile phones to record the video and transmitted it to the short video platform.
The stinky tofu of the fire palace that relies on "smell" to go out of the circle begins with incense spraying, and this ultimate sense of smell and taste experience is like riding a roller coaster, which is extremely challenging. Therefore, it does not need to deliberately create a sense of atmosphere, with its own "net red" temperament. This year, the Fire Palace Stinky Tofu stood out from the "Eight Traditional Snack Making Techniques" of the Fire Palace and became a national intangible cultural heritage.
Changsha Fire Palace Stinky Tofu. Photo: Huang Qiqing▼
How hot is it? From August last year to August this year alone, there were more than 540,000 videos with "stinky tofu" as the keyword, and hundreds of videos with "Changsha Fire Palace Stinky Tofu" as the keyword, with 229,000 video views.
Fire Palace stinky tofu as a food industry "net red", Changsha business card, it always has to work hard between "smell" and "incense".
On Thursday, the self-proclaimed "stinky man of the fire palace", the 44-year-old was "barded" with stinky tofu. In the brine room of the Fire Palace, different batches of brine are marked according to the number of fermentation days, and the average person is discouraged from smelling the stench between the brines, and thursdays are like treasures.
"In my opinion, they are all incense." Pinching his nose into the brine room, he happened to run into the stinky tofu he had made on the day of the brine.
Stinky tofu is in the process of being made. Photo: Huang Qiqing▼
He chose the brine that had been fermented for 2198 days, and opened two brine tanks, one of which was poured into the prepared dried tofu for special brine, and the next cylinder was used to wash the marinated stinky tofu.
"The brine of the marinated stinky tofu must be fermented for more than two years to ensure the bad taste." These brines are passed down from generation to generation, a tank of brine is used up, and then the new fermentation is continued to ensure that the brine of the brine to make stinky tofu is always the old brine.
"I don't know how old these brines of mine are, they were handed down by the masters, probably since there was stinky tofu in the Fire Palace." Therefore, Thursday Eye took the brine very seriously, even if it was the water to wash the stinky tofu, he did not waste a drop.
Stinky tofu looks like a dark dish on the outside, but it is very elaborate, and each process is very delicate. Thursday Mu said that the light selection of materials are all university questions, first of all, tofu should be good, the use of high-grade soybeans to make tofu embryos, the softness and hardness of the tofu embryos should be just right, too hard to affect the stinky tofu brine into the taste, too soft stinky tofu is less powerful.
The brine production is more critical, he follows the pure plant halogen recipe left by the masters, and uses more than 20 kinds of raw materials such as Liuyang tempeh, perilla leaves, winter shoots, and shiitake mushrooms to make brine on the day of the winter solstice every year. "The things that are passed down should be carried down slowly, and it has a human touch."
After soaking the tofu in the brine for ten minutes, he put on his long gloves and slowly turned it over, for him, it was a sacred moment, the hand had to touch each piece of dried tofu, feel their softness, make sure they fully absorbed the brine, and estimated the soaking time.
"Today's tofu is soaked for 6 hours." At the end of a round of flipping, he said emphatically, "The tofu embryo is pinched with strength, the fermentation is slow in winter, 6 hours is just right, if it is summer, 2 to 4 hours is enough." ”
Fried stinky tofu. Photo: Huang Qiqing▼
The "smelly" smell is enough, and the next step is the incense spraying session. Fried stinky tofu is a unique task for Thursday purposes, and it is difficult for ordinary people to eat stinky tofu to eat on the outside and tender on the inside.
He picked up the colander to drain the oil, only to see the stinky tofu rolled in the colander a few times, the oil drained, but they were safe and sound, "throwing dry oil and can not throw the stinky tofu away, it seems simple, ordinary people can't do it." "His fried stinky tofu comes out of the pan, diners taste it while it is hot, crispy and fragrant in the mouth, and everyone is directly addicted." Thursday looked at this scene and smiled.
For him, the inheritance and development of the stinky tofu technique is different from other intangible cultural heritage, it does not have a fancy form, but to keep the production techniques that have been tested by generations and firmly grasp the stomach of diners.
04.
Xiang embroidery:
"Don't want to embroider without moisture"
In Changsha Xiang embroidery city Li Yan embroidery art museum, upstairs and downstairs are two different worlds.
Upstairs, most of Li Yan's Xiang embroidery collection, her proud "tiger" hangs on the wall of the workbench, vivid.
Downstairs is Li Yan's daughter Chang Ni's creative "world", all kinds of cross-border tide play, creative Xiang embroidery, let people can't open their eyes, here, "tide" and intangible cultural heritage Xiang embroidery seamless docking.
Li Yan, a master of Xiang embroidery, has studied Xiang embroidery for more than 40 years. Photo: Huang Qiqing▼
In the intangible cultural heritage, the combination of Li Yan's mother and son belongs to the high match. Li Yan has studied Xiang embroidery for more than 40 years, and as a master of Chinese arts and crafts, the director of the embroidery professional committee of the China Arts and Crafts Association, and an expert who enjoys special government allowances from the State Council, she has won many honors in the field of embroidery.
Her works "Lotus Pond Qingqu", "Zhangjiajie" and "Winter Snow North Country" were displayed in the Great Hall of the People, and in 2013, her Xiang embroidery work "The King of mountain beasts" sold for HK$2.8 million at Poly in Hong Kong, China.
Li Yan explains Xiang embroidery works. Photo: Huang Qiqing▼
Compared with Xiang embroidery based on traditional Chinese painting, Li Yan is an innovator, and she introduces Western painting techniques into Xiang embroidery to achieve the effect of combining Chinese and Western paintings. Lions and tigers are the most representative and difficult themes in Xiang embroidery, and traditional Xiang embroidery usually uses mane needles to embroider lions and tigers, with thick lines. On this basis, Li Yan studied four new needles: sweat needles, curly hair needles, soft hair needles, and villous hair needles.
Extremely fine hair needles are used on the tiger's nose to reflect the fleshy feeling, and even the pores are clearly visible; the curly needle is used to express the soft hairs on the tiger's ears, and the softer hair needles in the lower part of the ear; and the fluffy hairs on the tiger's neck are represented by villus needles. In this way, the embroidered tiger was full of energy and almost jumped out of the screen.
Xiang embroidery. Photo: Huang Qiqing▼
In addition, on the basis of inheriting the design and stitching of Xiang embroidery, Li Yan also created new varieties of Xiang embroidery such as painting and embroidery combined with embroidery, three-dimensional embroidery, oil painting fully different embroidery, and light and shadow contemporary works. These "innovations" created an era that belonged to Li Yan.
In 2017, after Li Yan retired, he established the Li Yan Embroidery Art Museum, which is still responsible for the creation and collection of Xiang embroidery. Her daughter, who studied design in France, returned from studying abroad and became the director of the studio after 7 years of intensive research in the Xiang Embroidery Research Institute.
Chang Ni, who has been playing under the embroidery bandage since childhood, has different views on the inheritance of Xiang embroidery, she believes that inheritance is not to copy, but to keep pace with the times, keep up with the trend of the times, conform to the current aesthetics and values, and constantly innovate.
"What I want to stick to is my mother's insistence on originality and her dedication to inheriting Xiang embroidery." And my responsibility and mission is to take it on a new journey, to explore a whole new possibility. "Mother's work is collection-level art, too expensive, too far away from young people, and what she has to do is to pull Xiang embroidery down from the altar of art and let it return to life."
With this concept, she integrated "Xiang embroidery" into product design, collided with the team to produce a lot of "tide" concepts, and created a series of products that not only have Xiang embroidery craftsmanship but also practical value of modern life.
Chang Ni, the daughter of Xiang embroidery master Li Yan, holds her own Xiang embroidery crossover product - small tiger hammer. Courtesy of respondents. ▼
The Chang Ni team conforms to the "trend elements" that young people like to spread intangible cultural heritage, puts forward slogans such as "no tide and does not want to embroider", "embroidery life is young", "Xiang embroidery art life home", and breaks the stereotype of "old and old" and "earthy" of intangible cultural heritage.
In order to make Xiang embroidery more "trendy", they broke through the traditional Xiang embroidery as a single decorative feature, and used it in multiple dimensions such as life storage, space decoration, kitchen utensils, daily necessities, home decoration, automobile culture, and daily travel.
Xiang embroidery is combined with jewelry box. Photo courtesy of the interviewee▼
They also play crossover on product materials. In 2021, Li Yan Embroidery Art Museum developed a new Xiang embroidery refrigerator sticker, the embroidery surface used the Xiang embroidery process to embroider Changsha popular elements stinky tofu, crayfish, Yuelu Mountain, etc., and the base used building materials clear water concrete.
"Let more young people afford to buy and like, and only when there is consumption can there be inheritance." In addition to product innovation, Chang Ni also breaks the tradition in the sales model, she uses online + offline combination to build a full-platform, all-network, omni-channel promotion and marketing matrix.
Xiang embroidery master Li Yan. Photo: Huang Qiqing▼
Offline, in addition to the direct store, they cooperated with the Hunan Provincial Museum to launch cultural creation, and their products were also stationed in the Changsha International Financial Center Tide Play Store. Online, through the "Xiang embroidery + Internet" model, they promote Xiang embroidery culture on major platforms such as WeChat public accounts, video numbers, mini programs, Weibo, Xiaohongshu, Taobao, and Douyin, and open up sales channels, and the market response of these sales models is very good.
Next, what Chang Ni wants to do most is to cooperate with Chaopai, collide with new topics, and make Xiangxiu really catch fire.
05.
Tongguan kiln:
"Firewood" is like opening a blind box
When I arrived at the workshop of the copper official kiln "Clay Man Liu", the sunlight was just shooting obliquely from the glass exterior wall, hitting those clumsy cups and cups, leaving a charming light and shadow.
When we visited, Liu Jiahao's 36th kiln wood-fired works, the fourth generation of the century-old brand "Clay Man Liu", had just been out of the kiln for a week, and the new works were still being billeted. His father, Liu Kunting, was focusing on a private clay sculpture, repeatedly polishing the human face.
Liu Jiahao Chai Burning, "Yi" series. Photo courtesy of the interviewee▼
Compared with other young non-hereditary inheritors, Liu Jiahao, a non-hereditary inheritor of Changsha Tongguan ceramic firing techniques born in a ceramic family, is considered an "atypical" representative and even a bit rebellious. After his basic skills were firmly established, he went farther and farther on the road of pursuing individuality.
Others think that he is going astray, even his father thinks that he has too much personality, and in the face of his father's suggestions, he just listens, and his heart is still self. His father, Liu Kunting, was a researcher at the research institute of the former Tongguan Ceramics Corporation, and at that time, the batch firing of pottery in various factories required every work to be consistent and strive for excellence, which also created his style of pursuing perfection in details.
Liu Jiahao prefers the chic shape and grain, and he even gives ceramics more possibilities through knife cutting, carving and other methods.
"Clay Man Liu" two generations of heirs Liu Kunting (front) and Liu Jiahao. Photo courtesy of the interviewee▼
In the ceramic firing, he also took the sword to the side, obviously coal burning, gas burning, electric burning and other methods are easy to control and cost-saving, far more economical and efficient than firewood burning. Instead, he re-antique firewood and pursues the simplicity of ceramics.
During his university years, he spent more than 50,000 yuan to build an antique wood kiln, which was the only wood kiln in the province at that time. At first, his father did not understand him, because there were too many uncontrollable factors in firewood burning, and there were no ready-made materials at home and abroad to refer to, and everything had to be explored by himself.
Liu Jiahao Chai Burn, "Hidden Dragon" series. Photo courtesy of the interviewee▼
In addition, the wood burner is different from the general kiln, it is the ash and flame directly into the kiln, the resulting ash melted into a natural gray glaze by high temperature melting, rich in layers, rough texture. For his father's generation, there are traces of ash on the glaze or fire on the carcass, which is recognized as a "flaw" in the old porcelain standards and is not appreciated.
But Liu Jiahao prefers this uncertainty, and he even enjoys this kiln change, like opening a blind box, maybe there will be a big surprise. At his insistence, the wood burner has been completely scrapped from the first year, and slowly has a success rate, and now it can basically maintain a yield of 60%.
Liu Jiahao Chai Burning, Shi You series. Photo courtesy of the interviewee▼
Liu Jiahao has numbered every firing in the wood kiln, in 2021, he burned 5 kilns, and now, he has completed the firing of 36 kilns. The kiln is a sense of ceremony for Liu Jiahao, in addition to completing the creation of the utensils, but also to be fully prepared.
This is a very exquisite process, even the type of wood and the time of standing have requirements, wood to camphor, fir and waste wood and other conducive to combustion, their combustion value is not the same, there is a difference in the standing time.
When it comes to the kiln, throwing firewood, the type of kiln, the speed and method of adding firewood, the flow of air and other subtle factors, all constantly affect the color changes of the works in the kiln.
Wood-fired works. Photo courtesy of the interviewee▼
They almost three days and three nights without sleep, "firewood burner ash into glaze, the temperature to reach more than 1310 ° C, generally to 1000 ° C or more to add raw wood, a moment can not leave people." On the day of visiting the "clay man Liu" wood kiln, Liu Jiahao went to Shenzhen to attend the tea expo, and his father Liu Kunting introduced it on his behalf.
"The ceremony of opening the kiln is more sufficient, and the people from the north and south of the sky come to wait for this moment, they often have a party at this time, and they don't know how many boxes of wine to drink." Looking at his son's wood-burning kiln, Liu Kunting was full of relief, perhaps he had already recognized his son's persistence in his heart.
Today, Liu Jiahao is engaged in firewood burning skills, using the Internet and social platforms to run the "Clay Man Liu" brand with his wife. He basically used wood-fired tea utensils as the mainstay, using the traditional craft of "Clay Man Liu" to create ideas on tea utensils.
Liu Jiahao has many representative works, "Pile Zheng", "Songfeng", "Bamboo Shadow"... Among them, the inspiration for "Bamboo Shadow" is bamboo in nature.
His recent firewood works include "Hidden Dragon", "Shi You", "Dunhuang" and so on, of which the "Hidden Dragon" series is a hit. Unlike his father, more than half of his work is sold online. Whenever the kiln is opened, they broadcast live online, attracting a large number of fans, and many people like him enjoy the joy of opening the blind box.
In the "Clay Man Liu" workshop, Liu Kunting was carefully examining the freshly made tea utensils. Photo: Huang Qiqing▼
His small teapot cost thousands of yuan, but it was exported to the United States, France, Japan, etc., and today, his thousands of wood-fired works are basically sold out.
In his view, if the inheritance of intangible cultural heritage skills is to have more vitality, it is not only necessary to enter life, but also to improve people's quality of life.
The text | Wu Tingting
Photo | Huang Qiqing, interviewee, Qidong News Network
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