Seminar 2

RIDCH held the second seminar “Intangible Cultural Heritage, Chinese Mythology and Tourism in the Digital Age: Boat Launching Ceremonies” on November 22, for the Seminar Series “Chinese Mythology in the Digital Age” funded by Sin Wai Kin Foundation. This seminar invited the preeminent scholar on digital humanity and digital archiving, Professor Kuo Liangwen, the Distinguished Professor of Journalism & Communication, and the Director of the Digital Intangible Cultural Heritage Research Centre at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Professor Kuo started his talk by introducing the concept of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) initiated by UNESCO in 2003 and the significance of how digitization and digital humanities can help preserve and promote ICH. He shared two cases related with digitalization, heritage sustainability, tourism, and implications in digital humanities of Chinese mythology. The cases are the Mid-Autumn Festival Huangshi, the flying fish festival of Tao people on Orchid Island. The two rituals are deeply rooted in Chinese myths and beliefs and mixed with local folklore. With the extensive fieldwork on boat rituals, the related crafting, singing, foods and gathering, his team had built up a systematic online themed archive for Lanyu Big Boat Launching, and currently the team is running a special ICH website opening to all to upload data.

Professor Kuo introduced how field trip and digital archiving can preserve the mythological and legendary local practices of ICH. Cultural tourism and cultural industries nowadays are under great impact of digital humanities and technologies. It is also an attempt to attract younger generations into the preservation and reconstruction of ICH. There might not be booming effects on economics but rather adding branding and popularity of the specific ICH. Regardless of the vanishing of some local myths and traditions because of the digital capitalism and hegemony, however, the digitalization at least safeguarded some of the cultures. Professor Kuo suggested a solid field work study and a digital system are needed to present the knowledge systematically via the digital archive.