2019 BMW China Culture Journey’s Visit in Hainan Completes

Haikou, Hainan, July 13th - The 2019 BMW China Culture Journey, featuring the theme “Explore Hainan Island, A Spiritual Homeland of Originality and Glamour”, successfully completed its tour in Hainan today, with the fleet visiting over 20 intangible cultural heritage items during the six-day visit. Several achievements of this year’s Culture Journey were announced at the Gala Night of the program this evening. In total, 3 representative intangible cultural heritage items (including Traditional Dyeing, Weaving and Embroidery Skills of Li Nationality, Coconut Carving and Dongpo Bamboo Hat Manufacture Skill) and 5 inheritors in Hainan province have been selected to the Tsinghua BMW Innovation Center for Intangible Cultural Heritage Safeguarding. At the Center, inheritors will be mentored by professors from the Tsinghua University’s Academy of Arts and Design, to co-design and develop intangible cultural heritage-based products for commercial sale to promote poverty alleviation. Additionally, a diverse range of communication platforms have been introduced to complement the program, including a collaboration with the leading domestic travel website Mafengwo and produce serial Tour Guide, further promoting and raising awareness of cultural tourism in Hainan.

From July 8th to 13th, the BMW China Culture Journey fleet carried participants including scholars, entrepreneurs, customers and media representatives to inspect a wide variety of intangible cultural heritage items across Hainan, in cities including Haikou, Qionghai and Wuzhishan. Among the items viewed included folk customs (South China Sea Manual of Sea Routes), handicrafts (Traditional Dyeing, Weaving and Embroidery Skills and Rattan Weaving of the Li Nationality), fine arts (Coconut Carving) and traditional dance (Firewood Gathering Dance and Rice Husking Dance).

The 2019 BMW China Culture Journey’s visit to Hainan has selected 5 inheritors from 3 representative intangible cultural heritage items (including Traditional Dyeing, Weaving and Embroidery Skills of Li Nationality, Coconut Carving and Dongpo Bamboo Hat Manufacture Skill) in Hainan province to Innovation Center. Over the following three months, the selected inheritors will be mentored by professors at The Tsinghua University’s Academy of Arts and Design, to co-design and develop intangible cultural heritage-based products. The processing, manufacturing and sales of such products will help create new rural jobs and effectively advance the implementation of the national policy of poverty alleviation.

Throughout this week, BMW China Culture Journey has leveraged a diverse range of communication platforms to promote cultural tourism in Hainan by increasing public awareness of Hainan’s unique, extraordinary and diverse traditional culture.

• Based on the Journey in Hainan, the program will produce its fourth intangible cultural heritage-themed tour guide (BMW China Culture Journey Tour Guide in Hainan) to promote intangible cultural heritage preservation through an innovative, cultural tourism-based approach. The guide is expected to be released at the end of this year and will help promote Hainan as a base for international cultural tourism.

• Various sceneries and intangible cultural heritage items along the tour were broadcast on the TikTok video-sharing site, under the hashtag #FunIntangibleCulturalHeritage# to engage the younger generation in the delights of China’s intangible cultural heritage. Users were also encouraged to produce and share their own intangible cultural heritage videos. Videos shared under the topic received over 8,000,000 viewerships during the six-day journey, helping raise interest in intangible cultural heritage among the Chinese public.

As the iconic Corporate Social Responsibility program of BMW, BMW China Culture Journey has continuously operated for 13 years since its launch in 2007. The program, which leverages BMW's resources and core competitive strengths, helps to promote achievement by “empowering with innovative thinking”, striving towards a goal of “creating shared value”. The program is committed to bridging diversified social resources and integrating intangible cultural heritage into modern life by raising awareness of China’s heritage, while also promoting the sustainable commercialization, production and consumption of China’s intangible cultural heritage.