On June 3, Harbin Engineering University (HEU) held the 12th Chinese Traditional Culture Festival and the “Experience Intangible Cultural Heritage, Depict Civilization” Fish Skin Craft Practical Open Course of the Introduction to the Community for the Chinese Nation. WU Peng, Director of the Publicity and Education Department of the Heilongjiang Provincial Ethnic and Religious Affairs Committee; HOU Yichen, First-Level Researcher of the United Front Work Department of the CPC Heilongjiang Provincial Committee; and LYU Kaidong, Director of the Publicity Department, attended the event.
The course team of Introduction to the Community for the Chinese Nation from HEU’s Pomegranate Seed Studio meticulously planned the event. They invited Professor ZHANG Lin, a representative inheritor of the Hezhe ethnic group’s fish skin craft—an endangered intangible cultural heritage project in Heilongjiang Province—and his team to teach the course. Over 100 students from more than 20 ethnic groups across 15 regions in China gathered on site to explore the charm of intangible cultural heritage together, creating a vivid classroom for ethnic unity and integration.
During the course introduction session, Teacher LYU Kaidong explained the theme and intention of this practical open course by combining the cultural distribution pattern in the origin period of Chinese civilization, the characteristics of plum blossoms, and the evolutionary history of the Hezhe ethnic group. Starting with cultural tracing, Professor ZHANG Lin vividly recounted the thousand-year development history of the Hezhe people who “lived by water and made a living from fishing and hunting”, and interpreted the cultural origin, artistic features and inheritance value of the Hezhe fish skin craft. As a unique intangible cultural heritage skill exclusive to the Hezhe ethnic group, fish skin paintings embody the life wisdom and spiritual outlook of the Hezhe people, and are a precious treasure of Heilongjiang’s regional culture.
In the hands-on experience session, teachers from the inheritor team guided the students step by step to master core skills such as fish skin processing, pattern outlining, cutting and splicing, and detail decoration. Students of all ethnic groups collaborated and helped each other, carefully polishing every detail and patiently conceiving their works.
The Introduction to the Community for the Chinese Nation course offered by Harbin Engineering University for minority preparatory students has been running for 9 years, with a total of 512 class hours, of which 256 hours are practical sessions. This open course is an important innovation of the course’s “combination of theory and practice”. It breaks the boundaries of traditional classrooms and uses immersive cultural experience as a carrier to help students of all ethnic groups intuitively feel the unique value of Chinese traditional culture.
