Traditional arts and crafts from around the world are enthralling visitors at the ongoing 9th International Festival of Intangible Cultural Heritage in southwest China's Chengdu, showcasing an array of age-old customs and demonstrating the skills of the people who keep these treasures alive.
The week-long festival, which opened Wednesday, has brought together more than 600 intangible cultural heritage projects from over 60 countries and regions, as well as gathering over 400 representative inheritors from across China.
The event got off to a colorful and rousing start as dance troupes helped launch the festival in spectacular fashion, including thunderous boatmen's chants from China's Yangtze River, dancing flag wavers from Italy, and the lively rhythm of South Korean folk dances.
Away from this noisy spectacle, more delicate forms of artistry are on display in the main exhibition area.
With paper-thin figures and stories rooted in Chinese folklore, traditional Sichuan shadow puppetry was once the heart of community storytelling. Wang Biao, a national-level inheritor of this celebrated art practice, said his family have been performing shadow puppetry for generations, spanning back over 350 years.
"I'm the seventh-generation heir. Different schools of puppetry are distinguished by facial designs. Ours features rounded foreheads, noses, and chins, surprisingly close to modern human proportions. It's style is unlike any other in the world," said Wang.
First held in 2007, the biennial event has evolved into a key global platform for showcasing and exchanging practices in intangible cultural heritage, and this year the festival has introduced a new mechanism which features a guest country of honor, with Malaysia being nominated for this edition.
Eyo Leng Yan, director of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Division of the Department of National Heritage under Malaysia's Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture, highlighted some of the cultural treasures, including the Malaysian version of shadow play.
"This is the Kelantanese shadow puppetry that we bring from the northwest of Malaysia. It has 200 characters. The uniqueness of the Kelantanese shadow puppetry is that they use spontaneous dialogues. So the master puppeteer needs to speak the dialogue and control the puppets [at the same time]. It's not easy to do, but the master puppeteer can make it and this is the unique [feature] of Kelantanese shadow puppetry," said Eyo as she introduced one of the special exhibitions.
Traditional arts, crafts in spotlight at Int'l intangible cultural heritage festival in Chengdu
