Editor's notes：In September, 2022, the Feng Jicai Institute of Literature and Art enrolled the nation’s first batch of master students majoring in intangible cultural heritage science. This year, on September 8, the Institute held an opening ceremony to welcome its second group of such graduate students and announced the core progress made in the discipline theory and teaching methods. In such a moment, let’s review the speech Prof. Feng Jicai delivered on the opening ceremony in 2022.
Passion and Responsibility: Key to Inheritance of Intangible Cultural Heritage
Feng Jicai
Today’s opening ceremony is significant. We showcased here a large number of artifacts or symbols representing our nation’s intangible cultural heritage. Inheritors of national intangible cultural heritage have graced us with their presence. I want to give special thanks to Mr.Wu Yuanxin. He made great efforts to design and create a special blue calico cloth scarf to commemorate today's enrollment ceremony. We are also very grateful to all the keynote speakers. They are either well-known humanities scholars or educators. Even government leaders from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Ministry of Construction extended their congratulations through video speeches.
Today marks the official establishment of the intangible cultural heritage discipline in our country. We welcome the first batch of graduate students majoring in intangible heritage. This signifies that the protection and development of our country's intangible cultural heritage has entered a professional and scientific trajectory, ushering in a new era of both scientific and social development for intangible heritage.
Over the past 20 years, through the joint efforts of the government, academia, cultural workers, and volunteers, the extensive and splendid intangible cultural heritage that has been passed down for thousands of years on the land of China has been rescued, surveyed, organized, documented, and included in the government's management system. It ranks first in the World Heritage List. We now have achieved a general outline of Chinese heritage properties generated by Agrarian Age, which no country in the world has ever done.
However, being included in the ( World Heritage) list is not the end of our protection efforts, but rather another new beginning of it. The biggest challenge we are facing is the lack of professionals, both in research and in executive affairs. Currently, the majority of our 100,000 cultural heritage items are still in want of strict and professional scientific protection. Without this, we cannot truly achieve inheritance, and the rescued cultural heritage will be lost once again.
The work we have done in the past 20 years focused on urgent conservation; our goal in the new era is scientific protection. Therefore, I am so proud of you—the first group of graduate students in intangible heritage who are making history.
There are so much I would like to talk about. First, I want to ask you a question: Do you love folk culture truly and ardently?
This is not a simple question because I asked about "ardent love" instead of "like." Liking usually involves agreeing with another party, while love is more of an inherent feeling and an individual thing. Ardent love is even so. We grew up accompanied by countless folk arts, and folk festivals have always been the highlights of our lives year after year. The spiritual ideals, daily emotions, ethical values, temperament, and aesthetic standards of the Chinese nation are mostly conveyed through festivals. These things may not have crossed your mind before today, but you’d better become aware of it from now on. In a nutshell, only with ardent love for intangible heritage, can one take the cause of intangible heritage studies. It is through a sense of cultural responsibility that one can master the study of intangible heritage.
Therefore, I hope to see you working vigorously for the great cause of intangible cultural heritage on the vast land and fields of our motherland in the future.
As the concept of intangible heritage is relatively new, the construction of this emerging humanities discipline is still in progress. Our first priority is to establish and refine the knowledge system and theoretical framework of intangible heritage, as this is crucial for the establishment of a new discipline.. The second task is to develop a set of research and teaching methods that are in line with the laws and characteristics of intangible heritage.
We are to cultivate two types of talents, research talents and management personnel. Therefore, we put our teaching and research emphasis on disciplines such as intangible heritage management, intangible heritage archives, visual anthropology, oral history of inheritors, intangible heritage museum studies, and folk aesthetics. These disciplines are interconnected as a whole. As intangible heritage is a living cultural phenomenon, we advocate "bringing the class to the field." Field experiences and hands-on practice are our most important teaching method.
As a world-renowned top-tier comprehensive university in China, Tianjin University provides us with abundant resources and strong academic support for the establishment of our interdisciplinary study of intangible cultural heritage. We have already collaborated with relevant colleges at Tianjin University and planned to set up essential research and teaching programs related to philosophy, management science, and archival science.
We are well aware that the establishment of any discipline cannot be achieved by just a few individuals within a few years. It requires the dedication and efforts of one or even several generations. It requires continuous exploration and accumulation, and the concerted efforts of universities.
To this end, we have invited renowned intangible heritage scholars and national inheritors from home and abroad to form an expert committee. This committee brings together interdisciplinary thinking and research strength from various fields, jointly propelling the development of this discipline.
Our country possesses the grandest and most splendid intangible heritage and our protection and research work is at the forefront of the world. Today, the establishment of this discipline at TJU will undoubtedly accelerate the progress of intangible heritage studies. I’m confident that it will directly provide a solid and systematic scientific basis for the protection of intangible heritage in modern society and cultivate more talents for the great cause.
It will also serve as an independent discipline with Eastern characteristics and contribute to the protection and development of human cultural heritage.
A true understanding of history requires not only looking at the past from the present, but also looking at the present from the perspective of the future. I believe that when viewed one day from the future, we will realize the significance of the step we take today. We are a generation with ideals and aspirations. For the 5,000-year civilization and its future, for the sake of academia itself, for the young people who love and are prepared to dedicate themselves to the cause of intangible heritage, let us work together.
By Li Xinyi
Editor: Eva Yin
