China · Bamboo craft; Kitchenware; Hong Kong heritage
蒸籠製作技藝 (Jing Lung)
The hand making of round bamboo steamer baskets for Cantonese cooking, from splitting Luo bamboo into flat strips to weaving the base and lid. Traditional steamers are entirely bamboo with bamboo nails and no metal; Hong Kong's best-known maker, Master Lui Ming, introduced steel rims and joints for a longer-lasting steamer.
Risk level: Endangered · Not listed by UNESCO. Included in the Hong Kong ICH Inventory; one of eight craftsmanship items in the ICH Office's 2026 exhibition.
A Boshan (Zibo, Shandong) lampworked glass tradition producing spherical glass "flower balls" -- solid or hollow orbs encasing miniature flowers, insects, fish, or other motifs formed from colored glass rods and worked over an open flame.
The carving of personal, artistic, and official seals ("chops") into stone, jade, ivory, or metal, combining calligraphy, composition, and precise knife technique in a tradition tracing to the Shang dynasty (1600–1046 BCE), when seals…
The mortise-and-tenon joinery and dougong bracketing system underlying traditional Chinese timber-frame architecture, in which wooden components — a bearing block (dou) and a bow-shaped bracket (gong) — interlock without any glue or…
The hand-engraving and ink-printing of Buddhist scriptures onto knot-free pear wood blocks, practiced at the Jinling Sutra Printing House in Nanjing (historically called Jinling) since Buddhist revivalist Yang Renshan founded it in 1866 —…
The manual processing of tea leaves into China's six great tea categories — green, yellow, dark, white, oolong, and black — through a shared vocabulary of core techniques including shaqing (enzyme inactivation), weidiao (withering),…
Chaozhou embroidery (潮绣) is one of China's Four Famous Embroideries alongside Su, Xiang, and Shu — and the most technically extreme of the four.
The coiled and flat-strip weaving of storage and carrying baskets by Burundian women, historically among Tutsi households and today across Burundian communities broadly, using natural fibers including papyrus, banana bark, sisal,…
The narrow-strip weaving and tie-dyeing of colorful cotton cloth, panos, by weavers across Guinea-Bissau's ethnic communities, historically credited as originating with the Manjak and Papel peoples of the Upper Guinea Coast (encompassing…
The making of the chistera — the curved wicker basket glove used in jai alai (cesta punta) — and the hand-sewn leather pilota ball used in all Basque pelota disciplines.
The coiled construction of Rwanda's iconic conical-lidded baskets from sisal fiber and natural dyes, woven predominantly by women and known internationally as the 'peace basket.' Origins are described directly by specialist ethnographic…
Sebet (Себет — basket) is the willow basketry tradition of the Chuy Valley in northern Kyrgyzstan — distinct from the felt and leather traditions of the southern and mountain regions in being a sedentary river-valley craft producing…
Baskets and woven willow objects made from cultivated osier (Salix viminalis) grown in the Sologne wetlands south of the Loire.