Traditional handicraft empowers rural revitalization

  Recently, six departments including the Ministry of Culture and Tourism jointly issued the "Opinions on Promoting Cultural Industry Empowering Rural Revitalization", drawing a blueprint for cultural industry empowering rural revitalization from seven aspects.

Handicraft is one of the focus areas.

  Entering a new era, with the vigorous development of my country's intangible cultural heritage protection cause, urban and rural traditional crafts have received greater attention and better development.

Among them, rural handicrafts have injected strong vitality into rural revitalization with its flexible production and employment forms.

The rural handicrafts in the new era have a different development model and development concept from the past, and a variety of new formats have emerged, and a large number of innovative leaders have emerged.

Cultural and tourism integration of new formats

  Rural revitalization is inseparable from the formation and development of a new urban-rural relationship.

In the process of urbanization that concentrates resources and population in the metropolis, in the process of building a moderately prosperous society in China in an all-round way, there is an inflection point of "counter-urbanization", that is, the city's dependence on the countryside, the city's feedback to the countryside, and the integration of urban and rural areas. development pattern.

The transformation of rural handicrafts from revival to revitalization is inseparable from this macroscopic social development pattern.

  Take Heqing County and its subordinate villages as an example.

The revival and revitalization of Heqing metal craftsmanship has gone through four stages.

The first stage is the early stage of reform and opening up, when a large number of "small furnace craftsmen" went out to work and learn to accumulate skills and capital; the second stage was the mid-to-late 1990s, when a group of craftsmen returned to their hometowns to start businesses, and the Xinhua Silver Craftsman Village rose; the third stage After 2010, the national tea set market was opened up outside the national handicraft market; the fourth stage is to gather creative people and develop the cultural tourism industry since 2019.

  In the first and second stages, the main development is the manufacturing industry, which is similar to the development model of township industry since the reform and opening up, except that the former is traditional handicrafts, and the latter is modern industry; The transformation of the cultural tourism industry has seen new formats and new trends similar to those in Jingdezhen in Jiangxi, Yixing in Jiangsu and Longquan in Zhejiang.

  This transformation, on the one hand, echoes the intangible cultural heritage protection policy and the concept of social development, and on the other hand benefits from Heqing's unique geographical and transportation conditions.

Heqing is located on the golden tourist route between the ancient city of Dali and Lijiang, and it is only a 20-minute drive from Lijiang Sanyi Airport.

This makes Heqing's production of silver and bronze not only more convenient to communicate with the outside world, but also has the conditions to attract creative talents to stay, set up homestays, and carry out global tourism.

  Also on this golden tourist route is Zhoucheng Village, which is close to the ancient city of Dali, where there used to be a collectively owned tie-dye factory, which mainly served for export earning foreign exchange.

With the development of the tourism industry in Dali, especially after the Bai nationality tie-dye was included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage list, the tie-dye workshop in Zhoucheng Village began to transform from the secondary industry to the tertiary industry and achieved greater development.

For example, the Puzhen Dyeing Workshop here has more than doubled its annual revenue by establishing a Bai nationality tie-dyeing museum and conducting a tie-dyeing handicraft experience class integrating culture and tourism in recent years.

  New successors invigorate

  The popularization of the concept of intangible cultural heritage protection, the concept that lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets are deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and a series of related natural and cultural ecological protection policies are the public opinion and policy guarantee for the transformation and upgrading of rural handicrafts.

From the national cultural and ecological protection zone established since 2007, to the vigorous development of cultural belts, national parks and national cultural parks in recent years, a good environment has been created for the protection of intangible heritage and traditional villages.

  Intangible inheritance, on the one hand, depends on the overall environment and audience, and on the other hand, on the core inheritance group, especially the younger generation of inheritors.

Since 2015, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism has vigorously promoted the "China Intangible Heritage Group Study and Training Program" to cultivate and enhance the inheritance and innovation ability of the new generation of inheritors.

In 2016, a traditional craft workstation was established to introduce high-quality art and design resources into traditional craft gathering areas and underdeveloped areas.

On the basis of the workstation, a series of intangible cultural heritage poverty alleviation workshops have been set up to drive rural people to innovate and start businesses and become rich together.

  In the process, a large number of young and promising leaders emerged.

For example, the Xinjiang Hami Traditional Craft Workstation is committed to revitalizing Uyghur embroidery. By introducing design teams and commercial orders, it has established a handicraft cooperation system that radiates to the vast rural areas.

A group of villagers went out of the village and Hami to exchange and study in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and a group of leaders emerged.

Among them, Kader Reheman developed from a highly skilled "embroiderer" to a pattern designer and external liaison, bringing batches of orders back to his hometown.

  In the Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture of Guizhou, intangible cultural heritage people of all ethnic groups have greatly benefited from the intangible cultural heritage research and training program, traditional craft workstations and intangible cultural heritage poverty alleviation workshops.

For example, Yang Xiufang, the inheritor of Miao batik, went to Tsinghua University to study in the intangible cultural heritage training class in 2016.

After returning from her studies, she broadened her horizons and enhanced her cultural self-confidence. She organized Miao village women to engage in handicraft production in the depths of the mountains. Her daughter also opened a sales store in Danzhai County.

  Long Luying, a Miao woman from Shibing County, first went to work in the south, and then returned to her hometown to set up a Miao embroidery enterprise. With the model of "company + cooperative + farmer", it helped left-behind women find employment and increase their income.

The mother and son of Long Luying and Long Yu actively went out to study and exchange, and constantly improve the level of product design and enterprise management.

Today, they introduce algorithms into Miao embroidery design, explore the establishment of a digital cloud factory production line, increase production capacity and increase output value through the combination of hand embroidery and machine embroidery, and expand Miao embroidery into the field of home decoration.

  It is such a group of visionary, capable and aggressive inheritors who have played a leading role in the revitalization of rural areas by handicrafts.

With the popularization of education and the improvement of transportation and communication conditions, more and more rural craftsmen have strengthened communication with the outside world, established industry-university-research cooperation with universities, participated in various exhibitions, and carried out live webcasts.

There are also many college students who choose to return to their hometowns to start businesses. Some of them have become a new generation of craftsmen, and more have become creatives, designers and managers, making contributions to filling the gaps in the local industrial chain.

  (The author is Professor Chen Anying of Tsinghua University)