Thanks to local government efforts to protect and preserve intangible cultural heritages, visitors to Shandong province can see numerous traditional folk arts and skills.

"It is because of the cultural heritages, our cities have become what they are now," said Xu Xianghong, head of the Shandong provincial cultural department.

"Inherited for generations, the intangible cultural heritages are endangered. They should be protected and developed to serve people," Xu said.

A senior folk artist shows how to skillfully perform shadow puppets. Ju Chuanjiang / China Daily

Shandong has 153 national-level intangible cultural heritages. An additional 555 are listed as provincial-level, a further 1,957 are city-level and 7,019 more are county-level, according to statistics from the provincial cultural department.

Eight items, including paper cutting in Yantai and shadow puppetry in Tai'an, were put on UNESCO's Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity and 60 people were nominated as national-level representative inheritors of intangible cultural heritages.

"We are carrying out a series of measures to protect these intangible cultural heritages as many are on the verge of dying away," said Li Guolin, deputy head of the provincial cultural department.

To ensure intangible cultural heritages are passed on, Shandong launched a project to save related materials. The province also carries out training programs to attract younger people to learn traditional skills.

About 1,300 training classes were held for those interested in intangible cultural heritages, through which representative inheritors found 12,390 apprentices by the end of 2013.

More than 1,100 museums and rooms were established across the province to provide places to learn intangible cultural heritages.

A paper cutting museum at Yantai Mountain is a landmark in the coastal city Yantai, where paper cutting inheritor Zhu Manhua shows the skill to tourists.

A research center for shadow puppetry built in Tai'an, a city famous for being home to Taishan Mountain, has become a platform for spreading Taishan Mountain-related culture.

To promote the overall protection of intangible cultural heritages, Shandong built one national-level protective zone and eight province-level zones.

More than 4,400 activities were held during the past two years to help raise awareness of protecting intangible cultural heritages.

One of them was the biennial China Intangible Cultural Heritage Exposition, which was held twice in Shandong province. The third expo, which finished on Monday in Jinan, the capital of Shandong, displayed about 700 items related to intangible cultural heritages.

"Intangible cultural heritages not only enrich people's lives, but also promote the cultural industry and tourism," Li said.

To date, Shandong has had more than 1.28 million people involved in running businesses related to cultural heritages, which generated 18.9 billion yuan ($3.09 billion) in revenue last year.

Contact the writers at juchuanjiang@chinadaily.com.cn and zhaoruixue@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 10/17/2014 page18)