Exhibitions, online projects to celebrate cultural heritage

Various highlighted activities promoting intangible cultural heritages will held nationwide for the upcoming Cultural and Natural Heritage Day, which falls on June 12.

A key exhibition displaying over 1,500 intangible cultural heritage-related artifacts will open in Shanghai on that day to review the beauty of traditional craftsmanship in China, according to a press conference of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in Beijing on May 27.

The artifacts, including furniture, stationary, embroidery, costumes, paper-cut, porcelains, lacquer wares, and many other varieties, are created by 1,200 inheritors of ICH items across the country. The one-month-long exhibition, which will be held in six venues all over Shanghai, will review the protection of ICH in China and how the protection work benefited the campaign alleviating poverty in recent years.

Separately, eight major online video platforms in China -- Tencent, Douyin, Kuaishou, iQiyi, Youku, Bilibili, Kugou, and Sina Weibo -- will launch an online project promoting intangible cultural heritage through short-video clips, documentaries, and other formats. And JD.com, a major online shopping website, will organize a shopping festival promoting over 2,000 ICH-inheritors' products.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of China's first national law on intangible cultural heritage. According to the ministry's figures, China now has 1,372 national-level ICH items and 3,068 people have been registered as national-level inheritors. In the past decade, 7.76 billion yuan ($1.2 billion) has been allocated from the fiscal expenditure of the central government for ICH protection.

42 items from China have been included in the list of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO, more than any other nation in the world.