A Survey of Lishui's Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists

National, provincial and municipal

There is one national-level item: the Luoshan Great Dragon, project serial number 107, project code III-4, entered on the second batch of the national list of intangible cultural heritage in 2008, category traditional dance, type extended item; the declaring region is Lishui District, Jiangsu, and the guardian unit is the Nanjing Lishui District Cultural Centre.

Among provincial-level items are the Putang Bridge Cishan Temple Fair and the Zhang Family Throat Clinic. The district government's "Folk Customs" page lists the Putang Bridge Cishan Temple Fair as provincial intangible cultural heritage. According to the Culture and Tourism Bureau's reply of November 2023, five items, including Honglan Yudai Cake Making, the Zhang Family Throat Clinic and Lishui Paper-cutting, entered the list of proposed provincial representative items; appearing on a proposed list is not the same as being inscribed, and the level should follow the provincial published list.

Among municipal-level items are Mingjue Iron Painting Forging and Tiger-head Shoes. The Nanjing tourism portal's table for the first batch of municipal intangible cultural heritage lists "NJⅦ-19 Mingjue Iron Painting Forging, Lishui District"; the page carries no issuing body and no date and has limited authority. According to the Culture and Tourism Bureau's reply of November 2023, eight items, including Tiger-head Shoes, Hand-torn Chicken, Mingjue Pickled Greens, Helinfang Twin Dragons, Shrimp Lantern Dance and Shiqiu Fishing Songs, were successfully declared as municipal representative items in January 2023.

District-level lists and the figures

Two batches of district-level material have been seen: the third batch, and the fourth batch, the latter a public notice.

The third batch rests on two documents whose figures differ, and each is given with its own document. The notice issued by the General Office of the Lishui District People's Government states in its body that six district-level representative items were assessed, including Malt Sugar Making, Bamboo Weaving and the new-village Shrimp Lantern Dance. The list carried on the district government's web page is headed "district-level intangible cultural heritage list, 22 items in all", with a further attachment giving 19 representative bearers. The two figures are set side by side here and are not combined.

The fourth batch is a public notice: according to the notice published in January 2024, the fourth batch of recommended district-level representative items numbers 17, of which 14 are new items and 3 are extended items, with a comment period from 24 January to 6 February 2024. The final list has not been located, and these items must not be described as already published.

There are two sets of totals, for two different dates, set out side by side:

• Reply of November 2023: as of November 2023 the district had 1 national-level item, 17 provincial and municipal items and 28 district-level items, with 1 national bearer, 4 municipal bearers and 39 district-level bearers.
• A separate reply, to Proposal No. 110 of the First Session of the Eleventh District Committee of the CPPCC in November 2022: 36 district-level protected items and 38 district-level bearers; the same reply records 10 items declared at national, provincial and municipal level.

The two sets belong to different dates; they are presented side by side and are neither combined nor converted into one another.

List-building and safeguarding work

According to the reply of November 2023, the Luoshan Great Dragon was selected on 23 February 2023 for the first batch of national typical cases of distinctive culture and art under the "one county, one brand" programme; the same reply records the organisation of the Luoshan Great Dragon cultural festival and of the "New Year at the source of the Qinhuai" series of events.

Uncertainties

First, the district-level totals and bearer counts appear as two different pairs, 28 and 36, and 39 and 38, belonging to November 2023 and November 2022 respectively; this entry sets them side by side without choosing between them.

Second, the figure of six items in the body of the third-batch notice and the figure of 22 items in its attached list come from different documents, and each is given with its own source.

Third, the Nanjing tourism portal's table has no issuing body and no date; it is a weak source, and project codes and batches should follow the municipal published documents.

Fourth, the fourth batch is a public notice, and the final list has not been located.