Wenzhou's Intangible Cultural Heritage Shines at International Spring Festival Temple Fairs

As the Lunar Year of the Snake approaches, the"Happy Chinese New Year" series of celebrations have blossomed across the globe, becoming a significant showcase of traditional Chinese culture. The intangible cultural heritage (ICH) projects from Zhejiang, including several from Wenzhou, not only celebrated the festive season with locals at the China Cultural Centre in Malta but also crossed mountains and seas to stir up a"Chinese fever" in Madrid, Spain. These events, using ICH as a medium, have built bridges for cultural exchange, allowing the world to feel the profound depth and innovative vitality of Chinese traditional culture.

Malta: A Feast of Intangible Cultural Heritage Ignites Spring Festival Enthusiasm

From February 6th to 8th, the"Happy Chinese New Year" temple fair, co-hosted by the China Cultural Centre in Malta and the Zhejiang Provincial Cultural Centre, visited St. Thomas More College and the China Cultural Centre in Malta, attracting nearly a thousand students, teachers, and residents.

Wenzhou's Intangible Cultural Heritage Shines at International Spring Festival Temple Fairs. Photograph provided by Wendu.cn

More than ten national and provincial ICH projects, such as the Taishun puppet show, Wenzhou rice sculpture, Quzhou sugar painting, and Xiashi lanterns, made a stunning appearance. Representative inheritors of national ICH projects, like Ji Tianyuan, performed classic stories such as"The Butterfly Lovers" with their nimble fingers; sugar painting masters used sugar as ink to outline vivid zodiac patterns; and rice sculpture artists shaped auspicious peaches and dolls symbolizing good fortune from glutinous rice flour.

At the event, Italian engineer Luca Pasqualotto, along with his wife and children, stopped to watch the Taishun puppet show. He marveled,"The profound meanings behind Chinese stories are fascinating. The romance of'The Butterfly Lovers' predates'Romeo and Juliet' by a thousand years. These intangible cultural heritage arts bring us closer to the spiritual world of the Chinese people."

Spain: The"Magic" of Fine Paper-Cutting Conquers Madrid

In Madrid, Spain, the 2025 Year of the Snake"Happy Chinese New Year · Chinese Temple Fair" grandly opened at the Plaza de España. The booth of Yu Linmin, a inheritor of the Yueqing fine paper-cutting ICH, was crowded. With a carving knife and a piece of red paper, she created lively zodiac snakes and magnificent landscapes, astonishing the locals. Yu Linmin not only demonstrated traditional paper-cutting skills but also ingeniously integrated ICH into cultural and creative products: bags printed with the twelve zodiac signs, lacquer fans with blue and white porcelain patterns, gold-lacquered round wood tea sets... These artistic and practical works brought Wenzhou's ICH from the exhibition stand into daily life.

"Every piece is a seed of culture," said Yu Linmin. For three years, she has traveled to major festivals across Spain with a suitcase full of carving knives and red paper, overcoming language barriers with simple gestures and translation software, and conveying cultural warmth with sincere smiles. At the Madrid temple fair, she taught children to carve their first window flower and patiently answered the audience's curiosity about the techniques."Taking photos and checking in are habits of contemporary people. By creating a festive atmosphere, we make every photo a medium for spreading Chinese culture," she said. Her persistence has begun to bear fruit: more and more Spanish people are starting to collect paper-cutting works and even spontaneously organize study groups.

From the campuses of Malta to the squares of Madrid, the"Happy Chinese New Year" temple fair has composed a cross-border cultural concerto with ICH arts. It proves that traditional culture is not a static heritage but a flowing, vibrant existence. When the strings of the puppet show move the smiles of foreign children, and when the lines of fine paper-cutting outline the world's imagination of China, ICH has become a bond connecting different civilizations. In the future, as more"cultural ambassadors" step onto the international stage, China's ICH is bound to shine even more brilliantly globally, allowing the world not only to see"Chinese skills" but also to understand the"Chinese heart."（ZhongXin）