The Dragon Boat Festival holiday coincides with the Culture and Natural Heritage Day. On June 4, the 6th DHU Intangible Cultural Heritage Seminar “Yi Fragrance – Love Fair of Sachets from Chuxiong, Yunnan” was held in Yan’an Road campus of Donghua University (DHU). Having gone through more than a month of careful planning and preparation by the Education Research Center for Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Fashion • Art Design Institute, the traditional event featuring the custom of the Dragon Boat Festival attracted many Chinese and foreign teachers and students as well as community residents.
(Love Fair of Sachets)
(Foreign teacher wearing a hat embroidered with Yi parrot and an inheritor of Intangible Cultural Heritage)
(Pupils at the fair)
Twenty Intangible Cultural Heritage trainees dressed in Yi costumes brought exquisitely embroidered sachets, earrings, hats, braided flowers, etc. “It is one of the customs to make and wear sachets in the Dragon Boat Festival. The sachet symbolizes our ancestors’ pursuit of a healthy and beautiful life. Known as “flowers blooming at the fingertips”, the embroidery of the Yi nationality is an intangible cultural heritage of Yunnan Province. The Yi embroidered sachets combine the two, representing the blessings of Intangible Cultural Heritage inheritors.” According to Wu Jing, Secretary of the Party Committee of the Fashion • Art Design Institute, the trainees of this Intangible Cultural Heritage seminar are all from Chuxiong City of Yunnan, Shanghai’s target for poverty alleviation. The sachets fair reflects the combination of education improvement and poverty alleviation. Courses, such as the Embroidery and Folk Songs taught by Ke Ling, the Director of the Education Research Center for Intangible Cultural Heritage, and Accessories Design by the trainer Fu Ting, have contained the cultural communication and creative design of the sachet.
The teachers and students of the Education Research Center for Intangible Cultural Heritage made posters and tweets, and guided the inheritors to send the tweets via WeChat. Teachers from the Publicity Department of the Party Committee, Trade Union and Youth League Committee of DHU also participated in the publicity of the love fair. The surrounding elementary schools took the visit to Intangible Cultural Heritage and love fair as a graduation course. The pupils sang and dance with the inheritors, and bought the sachets to donate their love. A teacher of the elementary school said that helping is also a sort of education for love, making the pupils feel love and spread love while learning excellent traditional culture.
“Yi Fragrance – Love Fair of Sachets from Chuxiong, Yunnan” serves as a bridge for DHU teachers and students and Intangible Cultural Heritage inheritors, and as an opportunity for pupils to perceive the Yi embroidery art. It embodies the affection between Shanghai and Yunnan, and also conveys the friendship between DHU and Chuxiong.
