Witnessing heritage: Xi's cultural encounters (3)

President Xi Jinping has always emphasized the importance of protecting and promoting intangible cultural heritage. Following in his footsteps, let's explore the outstanding Chinese intangible cultural heritage.

Today, we highlight The Epic of Manas, one of the three heroic epics of Chinese ethnic groups. It was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009.

Consisting of myths, folktales, customs and idioms of the Kirgiz ethnic group, the extensive epic is considered an "encyclopedia" of Kirgiz ethnic culture. There are eight parts and 18 volumes, with over 230,000 lines — which is 19 times more than the number of lines contained in Homer's epic Odyssey. It has been passed down orally since as early as the 16th century.

During a visit to the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Museum on July 13, 2022, President Xi watched a performance of The Epic of Manas and emphasized that the epics are not only possessions of ethnic minority groups, but also a valuable treasure in the vault of Chinese culture. He also called for better efforts to preserve, inherit and carry forward the cultural heritage.