Tibet announces 3rd batch of regional ICH items

Tibet has recently announced the third group of its 101 intangible cultural heritage items, with traditional songs and dances, craftsmanship and customs making up the majority.

The newly-announced heritage items fall into ten categories, including folk literature, traditional songs, dances and operas, sports games and medicines.

Tibetan artists perform dance at a gala to celebrate the Tibetan New Year in Lhasa, capital of southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, Feb. 18, 2009. (Xinhua Photo)

Noticeable in the list are the Lhasa Tibetan New Year, the Doilung Fruit-Awaiting Festival, the Panam Bull Fight Festival, techniques for making highland barely liquor and tsampa, the staple food for Tibetans.

Applications for the region’s 61 intangible heritage items have been filed to include them in the third batch of China’s intangible cultural heritages, according to Ngawang, a staff of the Office of Tibet’s Intangible Culture Heritage Protection Team.

He added that compared with the first and second batches which are composed primarily of songs and dances, the third batch mainly features craftsmanship and folk customs.

In recent years, the region has redoubled its efforts to survey and protect its intangible culture heritages. So far, 66 items have been designated as the nation’s intangible culture heritages and 53 as the nation’s intangible cultural inheritors.

Meanwhile, Tibet has 222 regional intangible culture heritage items and 134 regional intangible cultural inheritors.

It has also made greater efforts to build cultural ecological zones to better protect areas with a large number of culture heritages. As planned, two such zones will be built, i.e., the Lhasa Gyiqoi and Xigaze Niangqu cultural ecological protection zones.