Olive carvings.
Lingnan guqin.
Tongcao Painting: Yu Yu clarifies Wanlie - Remembering the fight against the epidemic in the spring of Gengzi.
District Hongshan
Zeng Xianpeng
Su Xin
Guangdong Intangible Cultural Heritage Vitality Code
When you think of intangible cultural heritage, what comes to mind?
Grass painting, olive carving, guqin... Behind each intangible cultural heritage project is the accumulation of the Chinese nation's thousands of years of precipitated skills and profound spiritual pursuits. However, due to the long age of the times, it has become a problem to evoke resonance with contemporary youth and integrate into modern life. On the basis of adhering to its roots, keeping pace with the past and advancing with the times, the new generation of inheritors shoulder the responsibility and mission of inheritance and innovation.
They either skillfully integrate exquisite traditional craftsmanship with modern aesthetics, or break through the limitations of the intangible cultural heritage projects themselves, refine unique performance symbols, and make cultural and creative products such as pendants, so as to have a closer connection with the lives of men, women and children.
More is to go offline and seamlessly connect with people, so that young people can participate and experience the fun of hand-made work, so that more people can deepen their understanding, recognition and love of intangible cultural heritage in the process of visiting and experiencing.
They are using eighteen martial arts to make intangible cultural heritage popular again.
From strange to familiar
Offline exhibitions expand the visibility of intangible cultural heritage projects
More than ten years ago, when intangible cultural heritage first entered the public life, people's awareness of intangible cultural heritage was not very high. In 2011, the Guangfu Temple Fair was first opened, inviting a number of intangible cultural heritage projects to be displayed, and people came and went on the street, and from time to time people stopped to ask and communicate.
Looking back at that year, Zeng Xianpeng, the representative inheritor of the Guangzhou Olive Sculpture Project, a national intangible cultural heritage, felt that he was "in a hurry". After receiving the call at one o'clock in the afternoon, he was going to rush to the scene at three o'clock, and Zeng Xianpeng could only hurriedly pack up some simple works and go.
"Many of the older generation know that this is a olive carving when they see the work, but the younger generation basically does not know it and does not know that it is from Guangzhou." Through contact with the market, Zeng Xianpeng, the representative inheritor of the guangzhou olive carving project of the national intangible cultural heritage, realized that the intangible cultural heritage projects such as the Guangzhou olive carving project are facing the embarrassing situation of low recognition of the younger generation.
Then he participated in several Guangfu temple fairs, and many citizens also did not know and understand the Guangzhou olive carving at the beginning, to the works of different creators who could be directly distinguished from the style, and some citizens would come to the exhibition area every year to proudly display the olive carvings they bought in different years. "The longer the olives are played, the darker the color, and the change of color also witnesses the process of people becoming more familiar with olive carving." Zeng Xianpeng said.
Almost at the same time, su Xin, the inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage Guangfu Tongcao watercolor painting and the art teacher of the Children's Palace in Yuexiu District, Guangzhou, also fought in the front line of pushing tongcao painting to the public. At that time, Tongcao painting had not yet become an intangible cultural heritage project, in line with the dedication and love for Tongcao painting, she and her team carried out cultural and archaeological research in the Children's Palace in Yuexiu District, hoping to let more people understand and experience the endangered project of Tongcao painting through youth education.
In 2013, she conducted a survey of people traveling to and from the cantonese temple fair stalls and distributed about 1,000 questionnaires. The survey results show that only 2% of the respondents are aware of Cantonese grass paintings, mainly the elderly. By 2019, Su Xin was pleasantly surprised to find that this data reached 90%.
"Everyone is beginning to know that this is a unique intangible cultural heritage of Guangzhou." Su Xin said happily that through the offline scene, everyone can touch the material by hand and truly feel the special material of grass paper.
In order to expand the awareness of intangible cultural heritage projects, many inheritors have broken through the traditional model to come offline and communicate with people face-to-face. Under the pressure of his father's parents, Ou Hongshan, director of the Guqin Academic Committee of the Chinese National Instrumental Music Society and curator of the Lingnan Tianhongqin Museum, brought the elegant art of guqin to the outdoors.
"The results were unexpected." Ou Hongshan said that this attempt made him feel that the study of guqin is not only limited to relatives and friends, but also can open up contact areas, go to the crowd, and let more people know guqin. "In the past, we all liked it first and then we could contact it, but now people who can't understand it can also contact and then like it."
From show to innovation
The 12-to-1 guqin model can be carried with you
Extensive and in-depth contact with the market has further opened up the horizons of non-hereditary heirs, who have begun to try to communicate with young people in more interesting ways.
Recalling the first time she participated in the offline display, Su Xin was most impressed that many inheritors around her were selling things, and they only took a brochure to distribute in the venue.
A simple introduction to sketching, pasting grass pieces that are easy for people to paint... This is what the first year's brochure looks like. Every year since then, Su Xin and his team will dig into different topics and produce new promotional pages. Over the past few years, they have developed themes such as Guangzhou Beauty, Sea Silk, and Fashion.
Among them, the series of theme brochures of Hai Silk Road are divided into six pieces to collect the six scenic spots of the Guangzhou Maritime Silk Road, which can be put together into a continuous long map. It can not only enable international friends, young children to enter the Tongcao Painting, but also through the Tongcao Painting to punch in the iconic attractions of the Guangzhou Maritime Silk Road, "cross-border" to spread the two essences of Guangzhou's intangible cultural heritage.
Later, they found that the public was very interested in the production of tongcao paintings, so they invited some fashion designers to design them in combination with the production process of tongcao paintings. This year, they also developed a bookmark in conjunction with the Lantern Festival, which combines festive elements such as flower lanterns in grass paintings, and paintings from the Guangzhou Museum with anime characters.
"Many children sit in the stalls and try to draw grass, our stalls are always the most lively, but the sales volume is the lowest." After years of development, Su Xin realized that he would combine intangible cultural heritage with commerce, and tested the water to make a batch of keychains for sale. "That's what the market gives us."
After facing the market, Ou Hongshan is also thinking about how to promote the art of guqin to people's current lives, inspired by the guqin minus notation that he comes into daily contact with. Different from the stave, the guqin subtraction score has its own unique expression, on the basis of the fingering text score, the key words are extracted to take a concise part, and then these parts are spelled into a new "word".
The first cultural and creative product, Ou Hongshan chose several techniques in the subtraction score to make a pendant. "Many people do not know the subtraction score, but placing it through cultural and creative products can arouse the interest of tourists in learning and exploring the guqin." Au Hongshan also made a model of the guqin in a 12:1 ratio, allowing people to "carry" the expensive guqin.
In line with the advantages of good English, Ou Hongshan often takes the opportunity to communicate with foreigners who come to visit the temple fair to tell the excellent traditional culture of the local area. Later, he also took in a foreign apprentice with a finger disability.
"This student works in Taishan, Jiangmen, and is a senior engineer. When I first touched him, I felt like he was just a temporary experience. But he came again and wanted to study for a long time. "Ou Hongshan said that this apprentice not only likes the guqin, but also likes Chinese paintings and dramas, and his head is also the face of Peking Opera." I think this is the charm of intangible cultural heritage. ”
From transmission to inheritance
In the first grade of primary school, you can also learn to make olive carving
Not only in the way of dissemination to further innovate, the inheritance model of intangible cultural heritage has also made a breakthrough, no longer limited to parent-child inheritance, that is, father-son, teacher-apprentice inheritance, but to establish a unique social inheritance system.
"We chose to recreate the ancient art of sketching with teenagers as the starting point, which is a very bold and adventurous action." Su Xin sighed. As an educator, he expects this ancient art to influence more young people.
Since 2011, more than 200,000 children and the elderly have experienced or participated in the creation of tongcao painting, ranging from 3 to 80 years old.
In addition to the motivation of the competition, some schools also carry out the study of grass painting in the form of a second class. In the school, children can feel the story behind the grass painting pattern more deeply and understand the cultural charm of Guangzhou. At first, many children may find it difficult to draw, but trying with their own brushes and observing changes in the concave and convex paper can easily stimulate their interest in sketching.
Not only primary and secondary school students, but also some college students are also involved in the inheritance process of grass painting, and through two or three classes of training, they can create great works. Su Xin said with satisfaction that the students she trained in 2010 are now graduated from colleges, and 10 of them have spontaneously returned to the Children's Palace in Yuexiu District to retrain as teachers of the Tongcao painting team.
Zeng Xianpeng also extended the tentacles of non-genetic inheritance to the campus. Many years ago, he conducted lectures and tours on intangible cultural heritage in ten primary and secondary schools in Yuexiu District, and found that many students in schools had a high enthusiasm for olive carving. They can not only see the olive carving works with their own eyes, but also understand the history of Guangzhou, and even experience the carving themselves.
However, there are very few teachers who know how to carve, and many parents believe that olive carving is dangerous to children, and further promotion in schools still faces some obstacles.
Zeng Xianpeng took the right medicine and began continuing education and training for teachers of the intangible cultural heritage project of Olive Carving since 2016. Until 2019, more than 40 teachers learned from him to carve. At the same time, he improved the carving tools, improving the safety and simplicity of operation.
"Now I can clearly say that the minimum age for learning olive carving can be lowered to the first grade of primary school." Zeng Xianpeng revealed that many schools have begun to carry out olive carving intangible cultural heritage courses. Many children are able to complete two relatively simple works independently after a semester of study, and none of their classmates are injured as a result.
"Olive carving allows children to use their observation, imagination and hands-on skills." Zeng Xianpeng was deeply impressed that a parent once told him that after his daughter learned olive carving, she was more able to observe from the subtleties, which made him feel pleased.
From the temple fair to the metacosm
New ways and aesthetics give new vitality to intangible cultural heritage
In the process of further contact between non-hereditary inheritors and the market and young people, offline scenes such as the Canton Temple Fair have played a role in promoting it. The two promote each other and grow together.
This didn't happen overnight. He Wanfei, deputy director of the Yuexiu District Culture, Radio, Television, Tourism and Sports Bureau, recalled that when the first Guangfu Temple Fair was held, the display of intangible cultural heritage plates was a relatively vague concept. "Before 2010, the entire intangible cultural heritage industry list had just begun to be established, and it coincided with the Asian Games that we held, and Guangzhou saw such a possibility and hoped to promote the intangible cultural heritage to go one step further on the basis of the establishment of the list."
After the first guangfu temple fair tried to take the first step, "three sculptures, one color and one embroidery" met with the citizens under the Beijing Road Arcade, but at that time, the intangible cultural heritage block had not yet been born, and more of the participating elements of the Guangfu Temple Fair were still old-fashioned. Until the second session, the Guangfu Temple Fair specially set up an "intangible cultural heritage area", slowly developing from the arcade section to the north, middle, south section and even the entire Beijing Road Pedestrian Street, and the intangible cultural heritage gradually became the largest and most abundant area during the temple fair.
According to incomplete statistics, in each Canton Temple Fair, more than 50 intangible cultural heritage projects are participated, and more than 500 in 10 years. Some projects are constantly rotating, while some are fixed, such as the essence of Lingnan Intangible Cultural Heritage, "three sculptures, one color and one show", which is a fixed display of the Canton Temple Fair.
The exchange of intangible cultural heritage has also expanded from Guangzhou city and even Guangdong Province to the whole country. On the platform of the Canton Temple Fair, the intangible cultural heritage of Beijing, Tianjin, Guizhou, Sichuan, Henan and Fujian has also been displayed, and the intangible cultural heritage exchanges have been carried out with Hong Kong and Macao. In this process, the Canton Temple Fair has gradually become a platform for the display and exchange of intangible cultural heritage, covering almost 9 categories in the entire intangible cultural heritage list.
While allowing more people to participate in non-genetic inheritance, He Wanfei also hopes to promote the combination of intangible cultural heritage and contemporary aesthetics. As a result, the Intangible Cultural Heritage Creative Competition was born in 2015. "In the first Intangible Cultural Heritage Creative Competition, we contacted more than 20 colleges and universities in Guangzhou to mobilize them to participate in the competition and give new vitality to intangible cultural heritage with the favorite methods and aesthetics of contemporary young people."
With the tide of the times, innovation does not stop. Last year's online temple fair brought new inspiration to He Wanfei, moving the Guangfu Temple Fair online to create a "Guangfu Temple Festival Meta universe".
Enter the Guangfu Yuan Universe through a mobile phone mini program, stand in front of the archway of the temple fair, and transform the thousand-year-old ancient road Beijing Road into a virtual world. With the operation of the game program, visitors to the meta-universe can also shop and buy while walking around the roadside in Beijing, and can "dive" into the thousand-year-old road through virtual technology at any time to explore the deep history behind it.
Written by: Nandu reporter Wang Meisu
Photo: Courtesy of the interviewee (partly from the Publicity Department of the Yuexiu District Committee)