Mingjue Pickled Greens

Item name and level

Mingjue Pickled Greens appears in Appendix 2, the district-level ICH list, of the third batch of district-level ICH material; the appendix states that the list contains 22 items in total.

According to a reply of 28 November 2023 from the Lishui District Culture and Tourism Bureau, eight projects were reported as entering the municipal-level representative ICH list in January 2023, among them Tiger-head Shoes, Hand-torn Chicken, Mingjue Pickled Greens, Helinfang Twin Dragons, Shrimp Lantern Dance and Shiqiu Fishing Songs. The reply gives no project number and no serial number for the gazette batch, and is a working statement of the bureau.

The fifth batch of the list of representative items of intangible cultural heritage of Nanjing, published on 20 January 2023 by the Nanjing Municipal People's Government under Ning Zheng Fa [2023] No. 11, carries the entry "Mingjue Pickled Greens Making", number NJ-VII-62, serial number 43, in the category of traditional techniques, with Lishui District as the applying area or unit, on the adjacent number to "Honglan Beef Making" of Lishui District. This entry records the level as municipal, with the fifth batch and the publication date of January 2023, and the project number is verifiable.

The municipal list gives only the project name, number, category and applying area or unit; it gives no introduction, no bearers and no guardian unit, so the guardian unit is still to be verified.

Bearer

Appendix 3 of the same third-batch material, the list of representative bearers, contains 19 persons in total and records Liu Wenju as a bearer of that batch, under the wording "Mingjue Pickled Greens / Wind-dried Fish". This entry and the entry on Mingjue Wind-dried Fish Making each follow the appendix wording and are not merged. Whether Liu Wenju is at the same time a representative bearer of this municipal item is not stated in the municipal published document, and no assumption is made here.

To be added

The cited sources do not give the kind of vegetable used, the selection and pickling process, the area and the number of generations through which the craft has passed, or the guardian unit. The cited documents record the project name and its listing status; none describes the craft itself. The district appendix is also the source for the district-level status recorded for this entry. Until further sources are found, this entry records no detail of the craft or its history.