What’s going on with South Korea’s plundering of China’s cultural heritage?
Feng Shui has always been an important part of traditional Chinese culture. However, such things have been challenged by South Korea, who are applying to have Feng Shui included in their cultural heritage.
South Korea has successfully applied for the Dragon Boat Festival to commemorate the Chinese poet Qu Yuan as a cultural heritage in 2005. Judging from the current situation, their Feng Shui application for World Heritage is likely to be successful again, because the entire South Korea, from ordinary people to the president, to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, is supporting it.
However, in China, the government officially believes that Feng Shui is feudal dross and does not pay attention to it. It is nowhere to be found on China’s World Heritage List.
As Chinese people, on the one hand, we are very disappointed with the government's inaction. On the other hand, we ordinary people are trying our best to prevent the recurrence of similar Dragon Boat Festival incidents. We are happy to share our culture with the world, but we also consider any attempt to appropriate it to be extremely shameful.
The Gangneung Dragon Boat Festival declared by South Korea was officially designated as a "human legend and intangible heritage work" by UNESCO on the 24th, Paris time. The once heated dispute between China and South Korea over the Dragon Boat Festival's application as a World Heritage Site ended with South Korea's victory. In response to this, experts said in an interview with reporters this morning: Intangible heritage belongs to all mankind and it is not a bad thing for South Korea to succeed in its application.
According to South Korea's Yonhap News report today, South Korea's representative to UNESCO said that the UNESCO International Review Committee composed of 18 experts was held at UNESCO in Paris from the 21st to the 24th. The review committee selected 43 of the 64 declared properties, including the Gangneung Dano Festival, as "human legends and intangible heritage works." It is reported that the declaration system of "Human Legends and Intangible Heritage Works" was implemented by UNESCO in 2001 after recognizing the value of intangible heritage in human history and the necessity of preservation. This is also the third batch of UNESCO’s announcement of the intangible heritage list.
“South Korea’s successful application for World Heritage will not have any impact on our Dragon Boat Festival culture. Intangible cultural heritage is the wealth shared by all mankind. Our cultural traditions are recognized by other countries. I personally think it is not the same. It's a bad thing," Liu Kuili, chairman of the Chinese Folklore Society and researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said in an interview with reporters this morning. Professor Liu introduced that UNESCO’s requirement for intangible heritage declaration is that each country can declare one item every two years. China has many intangible heritages that are in urgent need of protection, which is why South Korea rushed to declare this time.
“The Gangneung Dragon Boat Festival is actually not the same thing as our Dragon Boat Festival.” Gao Bingzhong, secretary-general of the Chinese Folklore Society and professor at Peking University, said in an interview with reporters that South Korea’s Dragon Boat Festival is actually composed of dance, sarcastic It consists of Manchu sacrifices, folk art displays and other contents, which are completely different from the Chinese eating rice dumplings, rowing dragon boats, and commemorating Qu Yuan. "The only similarity is the time frame, which is held during the Dragon Boat Festival in China." Professor Gao said that South Korea The successful application for World Heritage has actually given us a very good revelation: they injected traditional cultural activities into modern elements, successfully achieved modern transformation, and gained international recognition, which has reference significance for the protection of Chinese cultural heritage.
The debate surrounding the application of the Dragon Boat Festival as a UNESCO World Heritage has generated great repercussions in the Chinese academic community and among the people since last year.
In addition, many scholars in South Korea also claim that Chinese civilization originated in South Korea, and traditional Chinese medicine should be called "Korean medicine". The prototypes of many ancient gods in Chinese mythology came from South Korea.