A few days ago, the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism announced the first list of cultural heritage ecological reserves in Zhejiang Province. After three years of creation, Tongxiang City’s “Sericulture and Silk Weaving Culture Heritage Ecological Reserve” was selected, becoming the only county in Jiaxing region to be selected. level city.
Tongxiang is located in the hinterland of the Hangjiahu Plain and is known as the “Land of Fish and Rice and the House of Silk”. Planting mulberry, raising silkworms, reeling silk, weaving silk…the ancient sericulture and silk weaving culture was born along the canal. In 2021, Tongxiang’s sericulture cultural system was successfully selected as an important agricultural cultural heritage in China.
“The mulberry trees are green and fertile, and thousands of trees are shaded by the sunset. The machines are buzzing, and the lights are shining brightly.” This is a historical portrayal of Tongxiang’s sericulture and silk weaving culture. Today, Tongxiang is an important inheritance area and protection responsibility for the human intangible cultural heritage project “Chinese Sericulture and Silk Weaving Skills”. It is also the county-level city with the largest mulberry planting area and the highest output in the province.
The long history of sericulture has given birth to Tongxiang’s unique sericulture culture. A large number of traditional customs and regional features originated from and celebrated by silkworms, such as the national intangible cultural heritage “Mountain Silkworm Rolling Flowers” and Mulberry Polder, as well as silkworm songs, sericulture proverbs, and silkworm gods covering all aspects of the production and life of silkworm farmers. Paintings and so on are still preserved to this day and are deeply integrated into the daily life of Tongxiang people.
In particular, the three representative silkworm custom temple fairs, the Qingming Silkworm Flower Rolling Festival, Shuangmiao Zhu Silkworm Flower Water Fair, and Wuzhen Xiangshi Temple Fair, have a strong sense of cultural identity and high participation among the masses. Relying on traditional festivals such as the Spring Festival and Qingming Festival, Tongxiang City has held 8 consecutive “Our Festival” series of folk activities, with a total of more than 1.5 million participants.
Based on this, after being selected into the creation list, Tongxiang City followed the concept of “building soul with culture, global layout, and integrated development”, focusing on the two cores of “inheritance and activation”, using sericulture and silk weaving culture as the medium , and strive to create a demonstration site for the protection and inheritance of sericulture and silk weaving culture in Hangzhou, Jiaxing and Huzhou, a folk tourism check-in place, a fashion shopping destination, a new highland for academic research, and an ecological maintenance habitat.
Starting in 2020, Tongxiang City has launched a “Cultural Gene Decoding Project” throughout the city, taking the lead in the “Chinese Sericulture and Silk Weaving Skills” project. A total of 512 cultural elements have been entered into the Zhejiang Province Cultural Gene Decoding Database and are listed The provincial cultural gene decoding project focuses on supporting counties (cities, districts).
In order to further strengthen the overall protection of the ecological heritage of sericulture and silk weaving culture in the region, Tongxiang City has established a sericulture and silk weaving core ecological protection circle, covering Heshan Town, Zhouquan Town, Shimen Town, and Wuzhen Town, focusing on building sericulture and silk weaving. There are four distinctive areas: cultural scenic area, sericulture activity experience area, sericulture theme study area, and fashion shopping and leisure area.
At present, Tongxiang has a complete and close industrial chain from mulberry planting and sericulture to silk reeling and silk weaving. In 2022, four intangible cultural heritage workshops, including “Silkworm Yuan” silk quilt clothing, “Cocoon Township” “Nanxiu Silk Language” silk painting, and “Wanjintang” Pu silk weaving, achieved sales of nearly 10 million yuan.
Tongxiang City also took the lead in the province to implement the construction of a general branch library of intangible cultural heritage, and built 6 branch libraries including the Silkworm Branch Library, and invited national experts to formulate the “Construction Standards and Management of the General Branch Library System of Intangible Cultural Heritage” Specifications” to form venue construction standards that can be used as reference and promoted. In June 2022, Tongxiang City and the Ministry of Education (Silkworm and Silk) Inheritance Base jointly held the Silkworm and Silk Culture Forum to provide strong academic support for the creation work.
Next, Tongxiang will continue to promote the follow-up construction of the “Sericulture and Silk Weaving Culture Inheritance Ecological Reserve” in depth and concreteness, promote the comprehensive development and diversified utilization of sericulture and silk weaving culture, and create a sericulture and silk weaving culture inheritance and protection Tongxiang model, and strive to build a demonstration site and pioneer area for the ecological protection of sericulture and silk weaving culture in Zhejiang Province.
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