In 2005, the Republic of Korea applied to UNESCO to make the Dragon Boat Festival an intangible cultural heritage of Korea. When the news came out, Chinese netizens were in an uproar, because in China, even children know that the Dragon Boat Festival is a traditional festival in China, and Chinese have passed for more than 2,000 years, how can it now become a cultural heritage of South Korea? Since then, the awareness of the Chinese people to protect traditional culture has begun to awaken, the intensity of action has begun to increase, and they have begun to apply for their traditional culture one after another. But there is an old saying in China, called not to be afraid of thieves stealing, to be afraid of thieves, there are too many good things left by the ancestors, and many of them are really "applied for" by foreigners.
If you think that South Korea only started to start with the traditional culture of the mainland in 2005, you are wrong. It started as early as the 1960s and 1970s, when South Korea was still poor. In 1968, South Korea named the mainland's "Chinese knot" "Korean knot" and took it to apply for heritage, but it was not approved. But throughout the 1970s, South Korea successfully applied for 16 intangible cultural heritages, 5 of which came from the mainland.
For example, hemp weaving technology, carving, bow and arrow making, Danqing, etc. from China, when these skills appeared in China, there was no Korea in this country. It is worth noting that as early as 1978, South Korea successfully applied for the "Gyeongsan Ciren Dragon Boat Festival". At that time, information was not developed, and people's consciousness did not keep up, so this matter did not attract attention at that time. It was not until 2005 that South Korea wanted to apply for the "Gangneung Dragon Boat Festival" as a relic, which caused an uproar in China.
Some people may say that the "Dragon Boat Festival" applied for by South Korea is only a ceremony for the Dragon Boat Festival everywhere, not the Dragon Boat Festival itself, and China also successfully applied for the "Dragon Boat Festival" in 2009, so there is no need to make such a fuss. If you look at UNESCO's website, you can see that China has indeed successfully applied for the "Dragon Boat Festival", but the Chinese Dragon Boat Festival on the English page is called the Dragon Boat Festival. Why is it called that? Because the English entry for the Dragon Boat Festival (DanaJe) has been occupied by Koreans. Now if you talk about DanaJe internationally, it is easy to think of various "Dragon Boat Festivals" in South Korea, rather than China's Dragon Boat Festival, not to mention that the Dragon Boat Festival on the mainland is not just a simple way to row dragon boats.
There are many more such events. For example, South Korea's "Lantern Festival" was successfully applied for in 2020, this festival originated in the 16th century Li Dynasty, originally we did not want to pay attention, but when South Korea applied for the "Lantern Festival", all used lanterns from Zigong, Sichuan. You should know that before 2001, there was only one kind of lantern in South Korea, that is, "square lamp". It was a kind of four-prismatic lantern, with no beauty to speak of.
【All the lanterns at the Korea Lantern Festival come from Zigong】
But after watching the Zigong lanterns, the Koreans secretly learned this skill. When they applied for the "Lantern Festival", the scene appeared as beautiful zigong lanterns with different shapes. This will make uninformed people mistakenly think that this kind of lantern is traditional Korean culture, and Zigong is the plagiarist. There is also the "court ceremonial music", which itself is a Court Music of the Zhou Dynasty that originated in China, and was not mentioned by South Korea, and chinese chimes were used when playing. Over time, South Korea will surely say that chimes are also Korean.
In addition, the traditional Chinese culture that has been successfully applied for or is being applied for by South Korea include dumplings, 24 solar terms, chopsticks, persimmon cakes, rice dumplings, Lantern Festival, noodles, hot pot, porcelain, oil-paper umbrellas, Mid-Autumn Festival, calligraphy, Li Bai, Li Shizhen, Confucius, Xi Shi, Zhu Yuanzhang, I Ching, movable type printing, Confucian academy, wooden architecture, tug-of-war, Chinese characters, kimchi, falconry, ondol, Hanfu, snail powder, Chinese knots, wrestling, traditional martial arts, etc., simply not too much. There are successful, unsuccessful, and unsuccessful and many applications.
[Every once in a while, they're going to come out and jump twice.
The UNESCO World Heritage Committee is an organization, of which China is a member, and China is one of the five major powers, which in theory will not let thieves steal their homes. But we cannot remain indifferent to the officially driven, almost horrific action of the side ball and even direct "preemptive registration" by our neighbors. On the one hand, we must beware of the squatting behavior of some people, but at the same time, we should also revitalize the ancient traditional culture and be accepted by the people of our country and even the people of the world.