Note of Intention

To present day, China has made great strides in developing a comprehensive cultural heritage preservation regime—including ‘material’ heritage, ‘intangible’ heritage, etc.—. In recent years China has attempted to both incorporate and integrate its cultural protection mechanisms into global discourses of cultural preservation regimes. China’s unique history, national circumstance, and special considerations all contribute to an equally unique outlook on cultural heritage and heritage protection, yet nevertheless done through an internationally recognized vocabulary of preservation norms.  It is precisely due to this unique history and development process that Chinese cultural heritage preservation concepts differ from other regions and countries.  Particularly in the case of ‘intangible’ cultural heritage, international preservation regimes are understood to begin at the ‘grassroots’ where local recognition of cultural heritage protection leads to locals seeking out support from governments or IGOs/NGOs so as to preserve, develop, transmit, and even promote heritage that they themselves perceive as valuable and endangered.  Yet in China, the process is quite the opposite.  Chinese conceptualizations of heritage protection begin with Party and central government institutions, which are then filtered down to regional and local governments, and finally to the common people.  That is to say, the state formulates policies which require lower levels of government to seek out and identify local cultural heritage to be protection, transmitted, and promoted. To be sure, neither worldview is more correct than the other, where each has its merits.  Nevertheless, this alternative outlook and system of practice has developed a radically different understanding of ‘heritage’—and has yet to be properly theorized.