Tracking China's culture

With the grand opening and subsequent thrilling competitions of the 9th Asian Winter Games in Harbin, Northeast China's Heilongjiang province, capturing the world's attention, alongside the city's magnificent ice sculptures and snowy scenery, the region's rich and diverse intangible cultural heritage has also found its way into the spotlight.

During the Games, Harbin's intangible cultural heritage projects have become a major highlight, demonstrating the unique charm of Chinese traditional culture to athletes and spectators from various Asian countries.

At Wang Chunjing's stall in Harbin, children gasp as they watch her create lifelike creatures out of molten maltose in minutes, but their reactions do not surprise the 34-year-old, who has been making sugar figurines, a traditional Chinese folk art, for more than a decade.

The process begins with heating sugar syrup, drawing out a small portion, kneading it into a ball with a hollow center, pinching the edges together and stretching it into a tube.

She then blows air into the tube and molds the sugar ball into different shapes.

"To make a successful piece, I have to do it all in minutes," Wang said.

Born in Heilongjiang's Qinggang county, she understands the children's reactions, because she, too, once watched in amazement as her father did the same thing when she was a child.

"He learned from my grandfather and mastered sugar figurine creation to support the family," she said. "But, from my perspective as a child, he was more like a magician."

Showing both interest and talent, Wang was able to make easy shapes, like a gourd, with sugar syrup by the time she was 6.