On the evening of September 15, the second Hunan Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) Expo was held in Changjuan Historical and Cultural Block of Chenzhou City.
12 representative ICH projects of Xiangxi, including Miao folk songs, Tujia bronze bell dance, Miao drum dance, Miao flower belt making skills, and Jiugui liquor making skills, appeared at the expo, presenting the protection and innovation achievements of Xiangxi’s ICH in multiple aspects.
The beautiful “Miao Song of Welcoming Guests” opened the prelude to the second Hunan Intangible Cultural Heritage Expo. Xiangxi Miao songs are a national ICH item, and the “Miao Song of Welcoming Guests” is one of the representative songs, with beautiful melodies and distinctive characteristics. In Xiangxi, when guests come to the Miao village, Miao girls will sing enthusiastic Miao songs to welcome them.
The second Hunan Intangible Cultural Heritage Expo mainly consisted of two parts of the “immersive scene ICH performance” and the “ICH market”, to tell the story of Hunan well and build ICH brands.
In accordance with the idea of integrating the exhibition area and the block, the ICH performance innovatively created tourism scenes in different exhibition and performance forms.
Visitors could experience the Tujia bronze bell dance, Miao flower belt making skills, Miao silver jewelry forging skills, golden ancient tea making skills, Xiangxi Miao embroidery, Xiangxi bamboo weaving skills, Jiugui liquor brewing skills, Fenghuang ginger candy making skills, Miao square drum, Xiangxi clay pottery making skills, Tujia hand-waving dance and other interactive ICH programs.
“These bamboo articles are so delicate.” Visitors were attracted by the dazzling array of intangible heritage works and cultural and creative products of Xiangxi, and were also moved by the artisan spirit of Xiangxi’s ICH inheritors.
Xiangxi, as a treasured place of ICH, now has 1 world-level ICH item, 28 national-level ICH items, 85 provincial-level ICH items and 273 prefecture-level ICH items.
The Wuling Mountain area (Xiangxi) Tujia and Miao cultural ecological protection area was recognized as one of the first batch of national cultural ecological protection areas, and the only national cultural ecological protection area in Hunan.
In recent years, Xiangxi has actively promoted cultural protection and inheritance, and the integrated development of “ICH plus tourism” and “ICH plus poverty alleviation”, which has made the “soft power” of traditional culture strong support for rural revitalization.
