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The Activation Of Intangible Cultural Heritage: Inheriting Intangible Cultural Heritage And Enabling Rural Revitalization

2022/4/1 15:39:00 0

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Interview with Chai Xingtong, founder of Guangzhou folk art innovation center and founder of Chai's, a Chinese Folk Art Hand Woven brand

　 Reporter Tao Hong

　　 The disappearance of a craft means the disappearance of a small museum. " As the crystallization of China's millennium cultural heritage, hand weaving technology is also a "small museum" of China's textile intangible cultural heritage.

　　 As an active brand of Chinese folk arts hand-woven fabric, Chai's hopes to recover the traditional Chinese spirit of creation, reconstruct the logic of "creation" from the source, and create products with cultural ideas and high recognition. On the basis of maintaining the traditional weaving technology of hand-woven fabrics, Chai's improves and adds modern manufacturing technology, integrates oriental aesthetics into the marrow of the brand and carves sustainability into the brand gene, At the same time, China's brand will stand on the world stage.

　　 No inheritance, no culture. A "audio visual feast" telling Chinese stories in international language is being staged. A new path of Rural Revitalization enabled by intangible cultural heritage inheritance has been gradually implemented, and an ecological system of rural activation and sustainable innovation with great commercial value is becoming more and more stable.

Chai Xingtong

Founder of Guangzhou folk art innovation center

Founder of Chai's brand

　　 01、 Retrospection and reconstruction Let intangible cultural heritage live in the present

　　 The integration of industrialization and informatization has given birth to the rapid development of "fast fashion". The upgrading of clothing products has accelerated, and the rise and fall of commercial brands have brought fashion and convenience to people's lives. At the same time, it has also brought environmental pollution that cannot be ignored in the living space of people.

　　 Do you dare to stand on the opposite side of "trend"? When everyone pursues fast, dare you pursue slow?

　　 Chai Xingtong asked himself to stand on the opposite side of the incident 10 years ago. At that time, Chai Xingtong worked for a well-known fast fashion clothing company to do design and research. He experienced the early stage of rapid development of fast fashion brands in China, and also saw the world's pursuit and love of Chinese culture and oriental aesthetics. Choosing to stand on the "opposite side" of the rapid development of industry, Chai Xingtong saw the environmental pollution and ecological damage brought by the rapid development of modern industry, saw the rise and fall of commercial brands, and saw the disadvantages and gaps between Chinese brands and international brands.

　　 The most urgent thing Chai Xingtong wants to do is to create a Chinese brand that does not damage the environment, has the core of Chinese culture, and can stand on the international stage.

　　 How to use international language to express Chinese original and reconstruct oriental aesthetics? Based on this, the plant dyeing and hand weaving hidden in the mountains, which contains ancient Chinese civilization, attracted his attention and became his first choice.

　　 "In 2012, I started to search for roots and open up wasteland. I frequently traveled between Guangzhou and Guizhou, visiting local craftsmen to learn about their cultural customs and weaving techniques." Chai Xingtong found that in the ancient villages inhabited by ethnic minorities in Southwest China, in each family's workshop, they would weave a kind of local unique cloth on the loom, which has a history of thousands of years.

　　 After thousands of years of precipitation, has been injected into the wisdom of generations, hand woven fabric has a steady stream of vitality. Chai Xingtong has made in-depth visits and Research on this folk weaving technology. In ten years, he has collected and participated in the research and development of more than 200 kinds of hand-woven fabrics. In 2016, its personal brand, Chai's, was established, which provides a platform for the production and display of intangible cultural heritage activation of hand woven fabrics, and contributes to the revitalization of rural areas.

　　 At the present stage, Chai's has reached cooperation with professional clothing colleges and design studios to jointly develop and recreate the activation application of traditional technology, and design and develop a variety of products such as hand-made cloth clothing, baby clothes, furniture, bags and so on.

　　 Witnessing "prosperity", it seems that they yearn for "nature". Over the past 10 years, Chai Xingtong has been committed to the excavation of folk crafts, exploring ways of improvement, insisting on taking the original ecology, nature and environmental protection characteristics of folk crafts as brand genes, and connecting traditional and modern aesthetics through design to create a worldwide Chinese original design.

　　 02、 Pay rise Building a new path of "rural activation"

　　 "Add firewood and pay rise to the fire of traditional Chinese folk art, and innovate forever." This is the moral of Chai's brand and the original intention of its establishment. How to inherit intangible cultural heritage skills and "activate" rural areas? It has become a problem that Chai Xingtong has been trying to solve in the past 10 years.

　　 In 2016, when Chai's brand was established, Chai Xingtong and the local government of Guizhou jointly established the Guizhou hand weaving base. The base members have gradually increased from a few people at the beginning to dozens now.

　　 As far as brands are concerned, their products are all based on traditional weaving technology with modern technology. Therefore, the zhiniang in the base is a stable supply chain, which endows the brand with sustainable attributes; For the weavers in Guizhou mountainous area, Guizhou hand weaving base is a platform for sustainable output of works, which endows traditional weaving with more derivative value, and realizes working at home, taking into account the family, and also has a stable and good source of income.

　　 "Only by building a benign business ecology can we add firewood and raise wages for traditional folk arts." Chai Xingtong said that at present, Guizhou hand weaving base has begun to take shape, and the traditional hand-woven products exported from the base are slowly entering the life of modern people. I am confident that the traditional weaving technology will not be forgotten again.

　　 According to reports, at present, there are more than a dozen weaving women in Guizhou hand weaving base, but soon others will join the traditional weaving team when they see such a platform. Of course, this is also inseparable from the strong support and promotion of the local government. With a total population of nearly 40 million, Guizhou has a very large space for future development.

　　 It is handed down from generation to generation. Over the past 10 years, Chai Xingtong has been sparing no effort in activating the application, sustainable development and commercial value promotion of hand woven fabrics, and has successfully explored a new path of sustainable innovation and development with both Intangible Cultural Heritage Inheritance and rural activation, and its commercial value is gradually emerging.

　　 03、 Pioneering and innovative Endow hand woven products with derivative value

　　 "Business is the best protection, and use is the best inheritance." In order to develop and inherit any traditional handicraft, we must go into life and modern people's life. This is not easy, but Chai Xingtong turns this sentence into reality.

　　 Under the leadership of Chai Xingtong, Chai's has recovered many lost weaving patterns and weaving techniques, and is gradually solving the hardware problems of dyeing, fixing and weaving machines. Traditional handicrafts such as dew cloth, bright cloth and diamond blue cloth are gradually integrating into people's life, and the technology of plant blue dyeing is gradually understood by the public.

　　 While inheriting and promoting, Chai Xingtong also considers how to develop and innovate, so that Chai's has sustained brand vitality and gives more commercial value to hand-woven products? It can be said that since the establishment of Chai's brand, Chai Xingtong has been determined to practice sustainable production - to give derivative value to traditional fabrics and to push traditional fabrics to the public through commercial operation.

　　 "The era of individual combat is over, and the era of cross-border integration and teamwork has come." In 2017, Guangzhou folk art innovation center came into being; In 2019, "Chu lung ng" folk art design library joined the family of Guangzhou folk art innovation center.

　　 As the founder, Chai Xingtong hopes to introduce the rich textile arts and crafts to Guangzhou and other fashion cities with the help of various forces and advantages, so that more people, especially young people, can have a close-up perception of the essence of intangible cultural heritage culture and skills, show the folk tradition and innovative ideas to the public, and export original design brands with Chinese spirit to the world, Export Chinese traditional culture to all parts of the world. At the same time, it also attracts more attention for the traditional craftsmen and their development in the mountains, and helps them get rid of poverty and increase their income.

　　 After several years of operation, Guangzhou folk art innovation center has reached innovative cooperation and promotion with Japan, France, Britain and other countries in the field of intangible cultural heritage technology. Chai Xingtong planned and organized the folk art exhibition of Southwest China's traditional hand woven fabric, "the lost flowers" Centennial woven fabric exhibition, "the birth ceremony of cloth theory" and "weaving China · Folk Art Innovation Exhibition", etc. all of which have received good repercussions. In addition, under Chai Xingtong's design and leadership, Chai's innovative research and development of Dong cloth crescent women's bag and other intangible cultural heritage creative products and hand-woven innovative fabrics have successively won the award of "cultivating and promoting ten categories of innovative textile products in 2019 and 2020", and have been collected and exhibited by China Silk Museum for many times.

　　 It is worth mentioning that this year, Chai's was specially invited to participate in the fourth China design exhibition and public art special exhibition. According to reports, China design exhibition is a national design exhibition project sponsored by the Ministry of culture and tourism, and an important part of the national exhibition system that has been striving to build in recent years. As the highest standard and most authoritative design exhibition in China, it aims to lead and promote the innovation of Chinese design and public art by building a professional and authoritative national platform.

　　 The exhibition consists of eight sections: cultural self-confidence, scientific and technological innovation, cultural and tourism integration, public security, rural revitalization, quality life, urban renewal and ecological livability. Chai's will be regarded as a classic activation case of Rural Revitalization to show the Oriental philosophy of design improving ecology and "stop at perfection", and show traditional folk art and excellent culture.

　　 Because of love, so faith; Because persistent, so stick to. After 10 years of persistence, Chai Xingtong's efforts have not been in vain. More and more people are seeing the traditional cultural and technological value of hand woven fabrics. The sustainable development mode integrating the activation and application of intangible cultural heritage and Rural Revitalization has also emerged with more considerable commercial value. In the future, Chai's will stand on a more dazzling stage to narrate Chinese civilization.