Chongqing- An online themed event named Exploration through a Millennium of Cultural Heritage in the Yangtze River Economic Belt was launched recently.

Following the opening ceremony held on December 14, two separate routes organized for media workers departed on a journey to help promote the wealth of history and culture in the Chongqing Urban Area and the Dazu Rock Carvings,Wushan Museum, and White Emperor City of Fengjie County.

Event organizers strive to produce an innovative series of top video posts to generate large traffic volumes for the region and allow for a millennium of glorious history and culture in the Yangtze River Economic Belt to shine nationwide through internet platforms.

Glorious Wushan civilization on full display

Wushan Museum is a 4A rated attraction that was opened in December 2012 as a branch of the Three Gorges Museum in Chongqing. The 13,300 square meters of floor space boast a fine collection of 28,185 exhibits covering the history of civilization in Wushan, beginning from the Neolithic’ Daxi’ period (4400-3300 BC) to the present day.

Top exhibits on display include primitive stone tools made by early man around two million years ago, bronze implements, clay figures, and gilded ornaments produced in the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties. The themed galleries combine to display the glorious history of civilization in Wushan and the Yangtze River basin.

The Longgupo Exhibition features many stone artifacts and fossils that have been excavated since the Longgupo Site of Wushan County was first discovered in 1984. Geo-magnetic dating methods reveal that the human fossils date from between 2.01-2.04 million years ago, while those of 116 mammals go back between 1.8 and 2.4 million years.

Wushan Museum has over 28,000 exhibits bringing two million years of human culture and history to life. (iChongqing - James Alexander)

Piying opera lives on in Wushan

Wushan Museum also has a function room where visitors can watch engaging performances of ‘Piying’ opera, a traditional form of entertainment involving colorful leather figures adeptly controlled behind a semi-transparent lit screen made of cow or goatskin, where they enact stories to the accompaniment of vocals, percussion and Chinese musical instruments such as the Erhu.

On the day, a team of four expert inheritors demonstrated a performance of this intangible cultural heritage, which has been recorded as early as the Southern Song Dynasty and has enjoyed long-standing popularity in Wushan over the ages.

Wushan Museum has become a study base for intangible cultural heritage. Above: A collection of Nuoxi Opera masks adorn the museum theatre. (iChongqing- James Alexander)

Unfortunately, the survival of piying opera is under threat due to a number of factors. The entertainment form was traditionally passed from generation to generation directly through practice, meaning that accurate records on performance art have always remained few and far between.

While there is great interest in this opera form, the current batch of inheritors is becoming more advanced in age. At the same time, younger generations now lack the will to learn the skills necessary to keep the tradition alive.

For example, at least six months of training is necessary to master the skills behind manipulating the figures, and a team of performers must hold rehearsal sessions regularly, as the figures and accompaniment are highly demanding in terms of memory, skills, and coordination over performances that typically last between 20-30 minutes.