Local NGO maps culture of remote Guizhou village

 

A CHP project documents the traditional culture in Congjiang, a remote multi-minority village in Guizhou Province. Photo provided by CHP

 

By Liang Meilan

Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center’s forum “Saving Gulou,” which would have discussed redevelopment of the Drum and Bell Tower neighborhood, may have been canceled by authorities, but the non-event managed to generate more publicity and sympathy for the campaign.

Registered as a local NGO in 2003, the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center (CHP) promotes the protection of cultural heritage sites, the revitalization of ethnic minorities’ traditional culture and the involvement of ordinary citizens in these efforts.

Working closely with UNESCO and the Chinese government, the center has helped stop several demolition projects across China. This includes the Kashgar government’s plan to redevelop its city, which would have torn down old architecture in what was once a major stop on the Silk Road trading route.

This year, the center is sponsoring five lectures at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA), each of which discusses a preservation project. The third and next lecture, “Congjiang Cultural Mapping –Tapping the Cultural Momentum of Community Development,” happens April 24 and focuses on a project in Congjiang, a remote multi-minority village in Guizhou Province. The goals of the project are to recognize the important role that culture plays in development, help improve living standards in ethnic minority regions while maintaining sensitivity to their culture and promote the belief that cultural diversity is as fundamental to humanity as biodiversity is to nature.

Village residents will be actively involved in documenting their cultural heritage. “During this process, local participants will be able to develop a greater sense of pride in their own culture while contributing to the completion of a vivid record of their existence,” Wu Lili, CHP’s media coordinator, said.

The center also filmed a short documentary on the Congjiang project, The Souls Paradise: Congjiang, which received a lot of buzz when it was played at UNESCO’s biennial global conference in Paris in October 2009.

CHP is working with UNESCO on this three-year project. “This pogram is part of a larger project, ‘Chinese Culture and Development,’ involving eight UN organizations and funded by the Spanish Government Millennium Goals Fund. CHP is the only true NGO among the several national committees, associations and science institutes working on this project,” Wu said.

The Congjiang project is using the same cultural mapping methodology that helped anthropologists study aboriginal communities in Australia in the 1960s.