Spring Festival may seek World Heritage status
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As Chinese people around the world finish off last-minute preparations for the lunar new year, also known as Spring Festival, or chunjie in Chinese, some folk culture scholars have asked for the festival's traditions to be given UNESCO Cultural Heritage status. As well as being celebrated by millions of overseas Chinese, the occasion has become increasingly important among foreigners.
In Asia, except Japan and South Korea, which hold the celebration as part of their tradition, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia have integrated Spring Festival as part of their local cultures.
In the US, Britain, France and Australia, political and business circles utilize the festival as a way of conveying greetings upon local Chinese communities. Some cities and regions have even declared Spring Festival a public holiday.
Feng Jicai, chairman of the Chinese Folk Literature and Art Society, has led a campaign in recent years for an application to elevate Spring Festival festivities to world intangible cultural heritage status, saying that the festival highlights diverse Chinese folk customs and represents all Chinese nationalities.
"Spring Festival should top the list for our country's world heritage applications, and a successful application will help China promote the country's cultural impact," Feng said.
According to UNESCO, intangible cultural heritage is traditional, contemporary and living all at the same time. It represents not only traditions inherited from the past, but also contemporary rural and urban practices in which diverse cultural groups participate.
So far, China has a total of 29 elements on the UNESCO intangible world heritage list, including Chinese acupuncture and Peking opera. The Dragon Festival and the Qiang New Year Festival are two traditional festivals already listed.
The Dragon Festival, added in 2009, was the first Chinese traditional festival on the UNESCO list. Inspired by South Korea's successful 2005 application for the Dano Festival, a similar occasion celebrated on the same day.
Heated debate about whether Spring Festival should be added have been ongoing.
Xiao Fang, a professor specializing in Chinese folk customs at Beijing Normal University, said that adding Spring Festival is an obvious decision, but that human resources and finances the process needs should be considered.
It took 200,000 yuan ($30,380) for Peking opera to be included on the list last year, Beijing Daily reported.
Martin Palmer, a British sinologist, told the Global Times by e-mail that Spring Festival is an exact Chinese cultural symbol when all its elements are assembled, namely kitchen gods, lion and dragon dances, red packets offered to family, as well as symbols of good luck adorning buildings.
"Sadly, Chinese New Year has now often become a way of showing off how wealthy you are, and so has become a celebration of consumerism, not culture," Palmer said.
He added that he supports the idea of an application for Spring Festival, so as to protect core Chinese cultural traditions.
"China runs the risk of having serious economic power, but nothing unique to offer the wider world. It's time to rediscover or even reinvent traditions, which speak not of money or power but of community, compassion, fun and of a belief that this physical world is not all that there is," Palmer added.
Zhang Yiwu, a deputy director of the Cultural Resources Research Center at Peking University, told the Global Times that this discussion reflects the growing importance of the festival inside and outside China.
"A successful application will improve Chinese people's cultural understanding of the festival," Zhang added.
Spring Festival traditions are varied, including putting peach wood charms on doors to ward away evil and keep families safe, although not all Chinese families have maintained them.
They also put handwritten poems on red paper besides doors and windows to wish a healthy, wealthy and peaceful new year to all, seen as the most characteristic custom.
Zhou Xueying, a professor of history at Nanjing University, told the Global Times that the festival itself was changing to reflect the habits of people during Spring Festival.
Zhou urged reform of Spring Festival culture before applying for world heritage status, such as reducing fireworks, calling them a waste of money and paper.
"It is better to spend some money on planting trees during Spring Festival instead of polluting the air by setting off fireworks," Zhou said.
