Heritage plus souvenirs: “bring” the Yunnan culture back home

As a culturally-diversified province lying in southwest China, Yunnan has long been famous for the arts and handicrafts created by local ethnic groups. Black and purple potteries, paper cuttings as well as wooden objects are among the most popular souvenirs for people who come to visit Yunnan. Almost every tourist would purchase a few handicrafts before leaving and bring them back home.

“Souvenirs developed from intangible cultural heritages are obviously the best sellers,” says Wang Ziqiang, who currently runs a studio to specifically popularize tile cats, Yunnan’s traditional clay roof ridge beasts originated from the Dali area. In his view, creative cultural products have to draw inspiration from stories, the history as well as antique objects, otherwise they will lose attraction to customers quickly. In other words, today’s souvenirs have to go hand in hand with intangible cultural heritages of one place.

Recently, the creative cultural products made by Wang’s studio have become increasingly popular among visitors and tourists. By cooperating with the Yunnan Provincial Museum, Yunnan Art Museum and a number of other institutes and companies, his products have been sold to Kunming, Dali, Hunan and even Beijing. “My products are primarily designed for young people, and I’m happy to see that they have already become my main customers,” Wang Ziqiang says proudly.   

In Jianshui city, southern Yunnan’s Honghe prefecture, there remains a fairly long history of purple pottery making. According to local history records, the earliest pottery manufacturing in Jianshui can be dated back to over 3,500 years ago. The modern history of Jianshui purple pottery, on the other hand, began in the year of 1953, when it was named one of China’s four most distinguished pottery wares by the Ministry of Culture at that time. Along with the development of tourism, purple pottery wares of Jianshui have now been considered decent souvenirs for any travelers who visit Yunnan, rather than just a local intangible cultural heritage.  

It should be said that it is intangible cultural heritages have turned Jianshui into a more interesting place. Today, many tourists in jianshui would choose to visit the Purple Pottery Park, Purple Pottery Street as well as Pottery Village, having a glimpse of the city’s thousand-year history of pottery making while bringing some exquisite pottery wares back home. 

Writing by Han Chengyuan, Li Hengqiang, Liu Ziyu and Zi Danyao; trans-editing by Wang Jingzhong