Intangible cultural heritages gain new life in Tsinghua classrooms
At the Tsinghua University Cultural and Creative Competition, recently held at Tsinghua, 23 students presented their innovative products based on intangible cultural heritages such as ancient architecture, Chinese New Year pictures, and handmade paper.
The competition was also an exhibition of the university’s "Chinese Craftsmen - Intangible Cultural Heritage Skill Inheritance and Technology Innovation" course, another attempt at combining a course and a contest.
Driven by the Fundamental Industry Training Center, the undergraduate course asked students from different professional backgrounds to study traditional culture deeply and explore practical solutions for contemporary inheritance and innovation. They responded by coming up with creative designs and products under the guidance of experts from the Academy of Arts and Design and the Institute for Cultural Creativity and with reference to the training center’s innovation and entrepreneurship platform.
Offered by Wang Deyu, a teacher at the training center, the course explores the technical skills contained in traditional intangible cultural heritages and sums up the scientific laws of engineering practice. In this way, innovative designs can be brought up in modern engineering and intangible cultural heritages can be better integrated into it.
Students participating in the competition were from various departments, including the School of Architecture, the Academy of Arts and Design, the Department of Precision Instruments, the Department of Electronic Engineering, and the Department of Chemical Engineering.
