Conclusion. In assessing the role of heritage discourses in Mianzhu’s resurgent nianhua

In assessing the role of heritage discourses in Mianzhu’s resurgent nianhua

industry, it is necessary to acknowledge the contested nature of “heritage” as a site of

competing discourses and practices. In aligning itself with UNESCO’s intangible cultural

heritage discourses, the state-led nianhua revival has further expanded its activities into

heritage tourism and festival production while continuing to promote state nianhua

333 Shen, Touring Mianzhu Nianhua, 199.

collections. Instead of taking up ICH as a critique of existing notions of heritage that

focus solely on tangible assets of the past, state authorities have simply taken up ICH

discourses to further promote these assets in different sectors of the marketplace. The

Nianhua Village and Nianhua Festival essentially reproduce the problems of the Mianzhu

Nianhua Museum by isolating certain historic nianhua designs as the privileged

representatives of tradition and heritage. Like the museum, these new heritage attractions

focus on putting historic objects on display in ways that narrate the demise of a living

tradition. While the museum transforms the ritual objects of the past into folk art artifacts

for visual contemplation, the village and the festival reactivates these works as markers of

an intangible heritage from a remote and distant past. Instead of putting the past on

display in the form of objects, the past is put on display in the form of a heritage-themed

village or temporary street festival. Thus, these new forms of heritage management can

be read as virtual extensions of the Nianhua Museum rather than genuine efforts to

engage the living, embodied, and evolving practices of Mianzhu nianhua.

Most significantly, the introduction of ICH discourses reveals the state’s vested

interests in keeping the tangible and intangible aspects of nianhua distinct and separate.

At the end of the Cultural Revolution, the notion that heritage must be “rescued” and

protected in the form of tangible assets helped reframe and legitimize another round of

state intervention in the nianhua industry. In isolating the tangible assets of nianhua, the

revival promulgates the idea that historic nianhua are already divorced from the realm of

embodied and living practices. It is a move that masks the problematic provenance of the

objects themselves while dealing a severe blow to those emerging producers who still

rely on historic nianhua for rebuilding a lost source of livelihood. These policies lend the

state-led nianhua revival an advantageous edge in the marketplace, where it has greatly

capitalized on the circulation and reproduction of the historic nianhua held in its

collections.

The introduction of UNESCO’s ICH discourses has failed to activate a critique of

these revival activities in Mianzhu. Instead of producing a discourse that directly engages

the inseparable ties between objects and practices, the notion of intangible heritage

simply reifies this divide by creating a separate category of heritage management upon

which existing practices may be uncritically transposed. This conceptual framework thus

supports the expansion of the state-led nianhua revival into new realms of activity

without necessitating a discussion around the objectification and isolation of cultural

objects that prompted UNESCO’s interest in ICH in the first place. In addition, the rush

to gain official recognition as a form of ICH further hinders the possibility of debate and

critique as state agencies focus on short-term gains and the staged presentation of ICH for

global audiences. In this regard, ICH discourses establish new standards and expectations

of cultural performance where the orchestrated production of heritage is considered

politically expedient and preferable to the existing forms of embodied nianhua

knowledge and practice.

In their engagement with these official revival activities, local nianhua producers

and consumers have also played an important role in accepting, rejecting, or reshaping

authorized heritage discourses. In particular, I have stressed the re-appropriation of

historic nianhua held in state collections as a way of asserting alternate claims on

heritage. The redesign and recirculation of historic nianhua as inexpensive ritual

ephemera can be understood as a critical site of resistance to heritage revival activities

that stubbornly situate these works in the past rather than the present. The appropriation

of historic nianhua as folk art replicas or as innovative forms of contemporary art also

poses a challenge to revival activities that attempt to characterize nianhua as a distinctly

rural activity limited to traditional woodblock printing methods. Although the nianhua

revival insists on reproducing a static and consumable past, the marketplace itself speaks

to the changing role of nianhua in the present and the wide range of embodied practices

that are involved in such disputes.

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