Heritage Boosts Income
Development of intangible cultural heritage contributes to poverty alleviation
When Yang Mei was unable to continue working as a construction worker after her back was severely hurt in an accident 10 years ago, she didn’t expect a skill she had learnt as a kid to offer her another chance to earn a living.
Yang, now 46, is leading a wax painting collective involving over 300 women in her hometown, Zhongying Village in Bijie, Guizhou Province in southwest China. She is also running her own wax painting company.
“Wax painting is a skill that every woman of the Miao ethnic group can gain,” Yang said. “It has been passed down for generations. The wax knives we use are the smallest ones in the world and can make very thin lines on wax.”
Reviving skills
With a history of more than 2,000 years, the wax painting of the Miao ethnic group has been described as “a ballet of the fingertips.” In 2008, it was designated as a national-level intangible cultural heritage.
Yang said that there are various designs in a wax painting and without using tools such as compasses or rulers, experienced local women can produce exquisite patterns. However, with more people moving to big cities in recent decades and local women barely able to make a living from it, few young people want to spend time learning the skill.
Things started to change in 2017 when the China Women’s Development Foundation launched an initiative combining the traditional craft with modern designs and e-commerce promotion. Seeing the development potential of this skill, Yang set up her own company.
In 2020, the number of wax painting collectives is expected to surpass 200, which will engage a total of 30,000 women. “Each woman in our collective can earn about 3,000 yuan ($429) per month now,” Yang said.
Yang Guofei, 58, is one of the women in the collective. Her two sons both work elsewhere and she stays at home with her grandchildren. “In the past, corn planting was our only source of income,” Yang Guofei said. “I never thought we could also earn money from wax painting. It now can bring in more money than corn.”
The collectives also cooperate with livestreaming platforms to demonstrate the art of wax painting and promote their products. Monthly orders valued over 100,000 yuan ($14,347) have come in through such platforms.
Wax painting is not the only skill that has seen a revival as both an intangible cultural heritage and a way out of poverty.
In July 2018, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism (MCT) and the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development designated the first 10 key zones to receive support under an initiative combining intangible cultural heritage promotion and poverty alleviation. The zones feature various forms of intangible cultural heritage.
Since then, more than 500 counties have rolled out similar projects, setting up over 2,000 intangible cultural heritage workshops.
In a circular released earlier this year, China announced that it will continue to support the establishment of these workshops nationwide for poverty alleviation, requiring local authorities to take measures to properly manage the workshops, including providing training on traditional crafts, developing quality products and increasing sales channels.
Official statistics showed that in the past year such workshops have added 463,800 new jobs and lifted 200,000 households out of poverty. From 2018 to 2019, the MCT allocated 120 million yuan ($17 million) to support research and training in the exhibition and promotion of national intangible cultural heritage in poor areas across the country.
Nationwide boom
Intangible cultural heritage has been promoted in combination with poverty alleviation in many places in China with the support of governments at different levels.
Xin Tuya, a 47-year-old from Sonid Right Banner, north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, has been working with a felt embroidery company for two years as an embroider. She learned the skill in a free training course provided by the company.
“I was the first to apply for the training in 2018,” Xin said. “At that time, I spent two hours a day commuting to the training.” In July 2014, felt embroidery was listed as a national-level intangible cultural heritage.
Xin’s family used to live on herding. After learning that a company was hiring embroiders, she didn’t hesitate to apply since it could bring extra money for the family.
She can now earn more than 2,000 yuan ($286) a month as a professional embroider.
More than half of the registered embroiders in the company are from poor families, and income from embroidery has helped many of them shake off poverty.
In Tibet Autonomous Region, southwest China, locals have also been bringing vitality to and prospering from several traditional cultural heritages.
With subsidies and materials from the local government, a workshop for making Tibetan drums was set up in Nyemo County in the capital Lhasa last year. Gyalen, the 68-year-old inheritor of this skill, employed five villagers from poor families to learn the skill to increase their income.
As an inheritor, Gyalen can receive a stipend of 10,000 yuan ($1,429) a year from the government.
In Nyemo, there are now 10 representative intangible cultural heritages and 88 cooperative workshops, creating jobs for 1,765 people, according to a report published by the MCT.
In October 2019, at the seventh biennial International Festival of the Intangible Cultural Heritage held in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province in southwest China, the contribution of intangible cultural heritage to poverty alleviation was one of the major topics of discussion.
Craftspeople from many places demonstrated their special handicrafts and exchanged ideas on how to explore the business potential of their products.
Song Shuixian, a national-level inheritor of a unique type of embroidery of the Shui ethnic group, demonstrated her handicrafts at the event. “We are happy to see more young people joining,” Song said. “While inheriting this skill, they have introduced many modern elements in an endeavor to turn it into a fashion.”
“To combine poverty alleviation with the development of intangible cultural heritages can bring many positive effects,” said Liu Kuili, a researcher from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. “This way of helping poor people can boost their confidence in making a living and create a healthy way of passing down intangible cultural heritages.”