杨柳青年画 (Yángliǔqīng Nián Huà)
Yangliuqing nianhua (杨柳青年画) is the Chinese New Year woodblock print tradition of Yangliuqing town, Tianjin — one of the four canonical New Year print centers alongside Weifang, Foshan, and Taohuawu — and the tradition that most distinctively combines woodblock printing with hand-painting. Each print is produced by multi-block color printing (using 5–8 separate woodblocks for different color zones), then the printed outline is hand-painted with gouache by a specialist painter — a practice unique to Yangliuqing among major print centers. The result is a hybrid object: printed structure with hand-painted vitality. The procedural knowledge encompasses woodblock carving (key block and color blocks), multi-block registration printing, and the specific 'open-face painting' technique (开脸 kāi liǎn) — painting facial features over the printed ground, which requires a different brush vocabulary from both printmaking and fine art painting.
Risk level: Endangered · China National ICH List (2006)
Guangdong ivory carving (广雕) represents one of the most technically extraordinary carving traditions in the world, distinguished by the concentric sphere (套球 tào qiú) — a single ivory tusk carved into a series of 20–40 freely rotating…
The Fuchuan (福船) is the traditional ocean-going wooden vessel of Fujian province — the primary ship type of China's Maritime Silk Road trade for over a millennium, and the vessel type used by Zheng He's fleet in the 15th century.
Sichuan lacquerware (四川漆器) is one of China's oldest lacquer traditions, predating the Han Dynasty and documented in excavated burial objects from Chu Kingdom sites (4th–3rd century BCE).
Shu brocade (蜀锦) is the imperial silk weaving tradition of Chengdu, Sichuan — one of China's Three Great Brocades alongside Nanjing Yunjin and Song brocade, and the only one with an unbroken 2,000-year production history.
Chengdu gold and silver inlay (错漆嵌金银丝) is an extraordinary hybrid technique combining Sichuan lacquerware and metalwork into a single object: fine gold and silver wires are pressed into channels cut in a lacquered wooden surface, then the…
The Luzhou oil paper umbrella (泸州油纸伞) is a fully functional waterproof umbrella constructed from bamboo ribs, hand-made xuan paper, and tung oil — without a single nail or screw, held together entirely by silk thread lashing and the…
Pathein hti (ထီး — 'umbrella/parasol') is the traditional paper umbrella making tradition of Pathein (Bassein) in Ayeyarwady Region — Myanmar's primary umbrella-making center for over 200 years.
The Turkish hat sanatı (calligraphy art) tradition — the Ottoman Islamic calligraphy tradition using the specific reed pen (kamış kalem) cut to the hattat's personal specifications, writing in the six classical scripts (sülüs, nesih,…
The Burmese parabaik (ပုရပိုက်) is the traditional accordion-fold manuscript book of Myanmar — a long strip of Shan sa paper (CRAFT-0444) or lacquered cloth folded into pages and painted with Buddhist manuscript text (in traditional…
The Turkish ebru water marbling tradition — the creation of marbled patterns on paper or other surfaces by floating natural pigments on a gum tragacanth size and manipulating them before transfer to paper, whose specific combination of ox…
Jianzhi (剪紙 — 'scissor paper') is the Chinese paper-cutting tradition maintained in Taiwan by Hokkien and Hakka communities — a tradition brought from Fujian Province and adapted to Taiwanese Buddhist, Taoist, and folk religious contexts.
The practice of Arabic calligraphy (khatt) in Kuwait, a revered art form directly showcasing the beauty of Arabic script and highly skilled in creating intricate designs that adorn mosques, government buildings, and public spaces.