This summer, in response to the call of the "High-quality Development Project for Guangdong Counties, Towns and Villages," the Hongyun Xinmiao Youth Commando Team from the School of International Studies, Guangdong University of Technology, carried out a field practice program in Nantou Town, Zhongshan City, focusing on the Charitable Lantern Party of Nantou, a provincial-level intangible cultural heritage item.
The team's name, Hongyun Xinmiao, literally translates to "Red Charm and Inherited Spark," representing young people's mission to carry forward red culture and local folk customs. The multi-phase project covers heritage venue visits, dialogues with heritage inheritors, lantern craft learning, community questionnaire surveys, bilingual public classes and original folk song creation, enabling the youth team to build a bilingual bridge for the preservation of local folk customs and international cultural exchange.
The Nantou Charitable Lantern Ritual boasts a history of more than 200 years, integrating lantern-making craftsmanship, ancestral prayer ceremonies and community charity banquets. To trace its cultural origins, the student team paid visits to three core cultural venues: Nantou Intangible Cultural Heritage Exhibition Hall, Beidi Temple and Beidi Village History Museum. They combed through historical documents and folk archives and examined old lantern exhibits to trace the full development of the lantern ritual, collecting abundant first-hand cultural materials for follow-up education and research work.
After finishing the venue research, the team conducted an in-depth dialogue with Yuan Qiangzhi, a municipal-level representative inheritor of the Nantou Charitable Lantern Ritual. Master Yuan walked the students through the ritual's development timeline, explained the auspicious meanings of different lantern styles and their application in seasonal celebrations and displayed a series of cultural and creative goods redesigned around classic lantern patterns.
Master Yuan stated that local authorities have rolled out targeted policies to support cultural heritage protection. He also noted that he hosts free lantern-making workshops in primary schools throughout the year, aiming to deepen children's understanding of traditional folk culture. Team members listened carefully, took written notes and captured photos of exhibits, drawing on their foreign language expertise to discuss feasible bilingual promotion plans for the heritage and exchange ideas on accessible international outreach suitable for young learners, gaining rich on-site experience for their later bilingual courses.
Under the guidance of community craft instructors, all team members learned the full set of lantern-making procedures in the community workshop, including frame assembly, paper pasting and traditional pattern painting. Every step of hands-on practice allowed them to move beyond textbook descriptions and grasp the delicate details of time-honored craftsmanship, turning abstract cultural knowledge into tangible personal experience. Meanwhile, the team distributed questionnaires across Nantou Town to collect local residents' views on the preservation and promotion of the lantern ritual, sorting survey data to identify current challenges in youth heritage education.
Drawing on all insights from interviews, craft training and questionnaire research, the team delivered special bilingual public cultural classes at Nantou Central Primary School. Balancing cultural knowledge and hands-on fun, team members adopted integrated Chinese-English teaching to introduce the origin, celebration procedures and symbolic connotations of the lantern ritual. They broke down lantern-making steps and offered one-on-one guidance for every student to help them finish their own handmade lanterns.
Team members compiled glossaries and simple English passages related to lantern customs, leading pupils to recite and practice. Children were encouraged to introduce their handmade lanterns and hometown folk traditions in basic English, cultivating their ability to share local Chinese culture with global audiences and integrating regional intangible cultural heritage into daily education for young people.
To further enrich the forms of heritage communication, the team composed an original village ballad "Warm Lanterns, Long Affection in Nantou," featuring both Chinese and English lyrics. The song incorporates classic scenes of lantern crafting and charitable lantern banquets and was performed at the Nantou Town audition for the Zhongshan Golden Land Music Festival, presenting local folk culture to wider audiences through innovative artistic expression.
This summer heritage practice brought together on-site cultural research, exchanges with heritage masters, traditional craft training, bilingual public education and original cultural creation. By going deep into grassroots communities, the students engaged with well-preserved local folk traditions, systematically collected and categorized regional cultural resources and leveraged their foreign language strengths to develop targeted cultural popularization courses for youngsters.
Moving forward, the team will sort out all field materials and bilingual teaching handouts and finalize their original bilingual folk song, extending the influence of the lantern ritual via campus lectures and online bilingual short videos. Through solid grassroots practice, these young college students have dug deep into the core of Lingnan rural folk customs, expanded two-way channels for domestic popularization and international cultural exchange of local heritage and contributed youthful wisdom and strength to the long-term preservation and wide promotion of regional folk culture.
(Source: Guangdong University of Technology)
