Living history at hefei’s “Culture Park”

By VAUGHAN WINTERBOTTOM

PLAYING word association with “theme park” is fairly predictable – Mickey Mouse, roller coaster and cotton candy are the typical trio that spring to mind. But in Hefei, capital of Chinas Anhui Province, a fourth word is vying for space among the staples – culture. The engine behind this culture drive is the China(Hefei) Intangible Cultural Heritage Park, where the only roller coaster youll take is the one through the annals of Chinese history. Its a great ride.

At the China Intangible Heritage Park, visitors witness master carvers chipping away at enormous, intricate wall carvings, take a look inside 400-year old bridal sedan chairs and are transported to dynasties past, and marvel at the genius of Buddhist grottoes that bejewel verdant cliff faces. As China engages in serious and important work to protect the legacy of its five millennia-long cultural traditions, Hefeis Culture Park is looked to as a paradigm of success.

Culture Gains Currency

The final two decades of the 20th century were a period of remarkable improvements in the daily lives of the Chinese people. This improvement was based on basic development economics –more job opportunities and consistently rising wages are the building blocks a population needs to rise out of poverty.

As peoples incomes head higher, however, other factors beside the economic begin to matter when it comes to standards of living. One is peoples access to, and connection with, their own culture. In recognition of this reality, in 2003 China kicked off a nationwide campaign to search out and protect the countrys unique cultural heritages and cultural relic sites.

Finding cultural heritages and relic sites proved easier than protecting them. By the early 2000s, many relic sites were in poor condition due to weather, time and, at worst, purposeful destruction and sacking for profit. Cultural heritages in the form of skills and traditions were not being passed on to younger generations.

“The question at the time was preservation and accessibility – where to house movable cultural relics and how to encourage inheritors to unique cultural heritages to congregate and pass their knowledge on to youth,”says Wang Ruisong, vice president of Anhui Huajiao Group, the organization responsible for initiating and funding the park. “Rather than open another museum, we hit upon the idea of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Park as a more engaging and interactive means of amassing and sharing Chinas living cultural history with the general public.”

Work got underway on the Heritage Park in 2009 with extensive support from the Anhui Huajiao Group under the provinces cultural and tourist development plan. Investment came from a number of sources, including Anhui Huajiao Group itself and the World Eminence Chinese Business Association. To date, funding has totaled a hefty RMB 2 billion, and the sites buildings alone occupy an area of 50,000 square meters.

Visitors are flocking to the park, located an hours drive from Hefei. Since October last year, 350,00 tourists from all over China and abroad have passed through its gates, with 90,000 in this years weeklong spring festival holiday alone.

Many of these Spring Festival visitors came to witness the parks International Lantern Festival of Culture, which opened on December 18, 2011 and ran till May 18 of this year. The festival was the biggest lantern display in the country, and presented 108 large-scale exhibition scenes depicting varying cultural motifs, which were lit by a staggering 60 million individual lights. Buddhism was a notable theme in many scenes – indeed, 108 is itself a sacred number in the religion. One particular standout exhibit was the

swath of Chinas rich history have been brought or reconstructed here to ensure their adequate preservation and protection. Visitors can browse classical Tai Fu Mansions – traditional dwellings of the scholar-gentry class in ancient China, Ming Dynasty hexagonal and octagonal pavilions, traditionally reconstructed trader courtyard homes, and a fullyfledged Chinese hippodrome. Traditional operatic stages jostle for space among Buddhist temples. With this much on display, the Intangible Cultural Heritage Park affords one a truly tangible grasp of the vicissitudes of Chinese history.

One of the truly standout exhibits in the park is a brick carving measuring three meters high and 400 meters long that recounts scenes from Journey to the West, one of the great classics of Chinese literature. The piece, which has been described as “A true treasure of the people” by renowned master craftsman and designer of the mascots for the Beijing Olympic Games, Han Meilin, depicts 1,800 characters from the story as well as 3,600 ghosts and demons from Chinese folklore. According to Guinness World Records, it is currently the largest brick carving in the world.