BEIJING, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture in southwest China's Guizhou Province has made innovative practices in protecting and carrying forward its colorful ethnic culture.
Photo shows terrace fields in Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Guizhou Province. (Xinhua/Lu Zhongnan)
The prefecture has 40-plus ethnic minorities, accounting for over 80 percent of its total registered residence population which records 4.89 million.
It boasts 415 villages on the list of traditional Chinese villages and 126 on the list of ethnic minority villages in China, as well as 56 items and 78 sites listed in the national intangible cultural heritage project list, involving diet, farming, clothing, singing and dancing, festivals, etc.
To protect the intangible cultural heritage projects, the prefecture has been striving to build the inheritor teams in recent years, and promoting such projects into schools. Currently, the number of representative inheritors of such projects at the national, provincial, prefecture and county levels in the prefecture is respectively 48, 170, 394 and 4,013. There are 323 demonstration schools at the provincial, prefecture and county levels joining the program of promoting intangible cultural heritage into schools.
The prefecture successfully created a zone which was officially listed as a national cultural and ecological protection zone in 2023. It has rolled out regulations and divided the zone into different areas for cultural protection and inheritance.
It has also attached importance on guiding, supporting, cultivating and developing ethnic and folk handicraft enterprises and workshops, and fostering inheritance, innovation and development of local ethnic culture through the market innovation of enterprises.
Data showed that the ethnic and folk handicraft enterprises monitored in the prefecture reached 102 in 2023, with a cumulative output value exceeding 274.6 million yuan, noted Yang Yongfu, head of the development center of the above-mentioned cultural and ecological protection zone.
The prefecture has also relied on rural sports events to shape new models and platforms in spreading its ethnic culture.
Girls perform artistic gymnastics at a sports event in Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Guizhou Province. (Xinhua/Long Jianrui)
Driven by the integration of the ethnic culture with sports events, the prefecture received 78.7945 million tourists in 2023, up 25.75 percent year on year, and generated a comprehensive tourism revenue of 87.582 billion yuan, up 37.01 percent year on year, according to official data.
(Edited by Gu Shanshan with Xinhua Silk Road, gushanshan.1987@163.com)
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