Longgang Maritime Cultural Festival: A New Vision for Rural Tourismwenzhou.gov

From February 28 to March 2, Longgang hosted the Rural Tourism Festival and the 3rd Linjiayuan Community Maritime Cultural Festival. This festival, themed around maritime culture, vividly connected Longgang's maritime DNA with the achievements of rural revitalization through a diverse array of activities such as intangible cultural heritage(ICH) performances, immersive interactions, and cultural tourism markets. It presented an audiovisual feast that intertwined marine culture with economic development.

Longgang Maritime Cultural Festival Scene. Photograph provided by wenzhou.gov

At the festival's ICH exhibition area, an ancient technique called"Longke" (oyster shell gathering)captured the attention of visitors. Six performers held nearly five-meter-long poles, simulating the labor scene of low tide: the poles plunged into the seabed and, as a winch turned, a string of oyster shells"rose from the waves." Huang Yanlou, the Secretary of Linjiayuan Community in Longgang, explained that this technique, originating in the late Qing Dynasty, was once a livelihood among local families. The gathered oyster shells not only served as building materials but also represented a major side income for local fishermen, with over 40 Longke boats operating at the peak of this community's prosperity.

"With the progress of time, lime and cement have replaced oyster shells as building materials, the Longke technique became a thing of the past," Huang noted. Currently, to better protect and inherit this cultural heritage, Linjiayuan community has formed a team of over 20 experienced practitioners, focusing on oyster shell gathering and ash burning. They aim to comprehensively demonstrate the Longke technique—from gathering and calcination to weathering and grinding—reviving the wisdom and resilience of ancestors who"sought their livelihoods from the sea" through performance and study tours. This technique is now being proposed as a representative project of ICH in Longgang City.

The Longke technique demonstration is one of the ways by Longgang City to deeply explore maritime cultural connotations and create a thematic IP matrix titled"Stories of the Sea." During the three-day festival, Linjiayuan Community collaborated with the Longgang Maritime Shadow Puppet Art Museum to present a tailored maritime cultural story,"The Adventures of Haiwa (the mascot of Maritime Cultural Festival)," using traditional shadow puppetry to take audiences back to the era of reform and opening-up;  the Haiwa poetry performances and interactive performances engaged children in understanding the maritime struggles of their ancestors. Continuous Haiwa parades combined with dazzling traditional iron flower displays and electric music celebrations, and created a unique fusion of modern rhythms with ancient crafts.

Historically, Linjiayuan Community is the earliest commercial distribution hub for trade with Taiwan and marine product transportation as well as a specialized village for oyster shell collection in Wenzhou. The Maritime Cultural Festival represents the community's cultural legacy rooted in its local history. In recent years, guided by the"Thousand Villages Demonstration, Ten Thousand Villages Renovation" project, the community has focused on themes of"waterfront scenery, pastoral landscapes, stories of the sea, and child-friendliness." It has connected various attractions including child-friendly service centers, research bases, waterfront parks, seasonal flower fields, and campsites. This has transformed Linjiayuan from a struggling rural area reliant on marine trade into a model community of shared prosperity characterized by beautiful landscapes, thriving industries, affluent residents and livable environment. In 2024, the Community was selected as a typical case in the national rural revitalization empowerment plan and became a provincial-level future village, a 3A-rated tourist village, and a five-star child-friendly community in Wenzhou. (ZhongXin)