The 11th China International Cultural and Creative Industry Expo has kicked off in Beijing. The four-day event includes exhibitions, trade promotions and forums to promote cooperation between Chinese and foreign cultural and creative industries.
The 11th China International Cultural and Creative Industry Expo has kicked off in Beijing.
Traditional Chinese handicrafts with a history of thousands of years have played an important role at the expo throughout the past decade. This includes pottery and porcelain products, plaited bamboo articles, and handmade furniture.
And ancient production methods are also on display. This summer mat, smaller than 1 square meter, takes a craftsman a month and a half to finish just the plaiting part. Quite complicated, the traditional skill has been passed down by generations at Tongxinghe, an old furniture maker, together with other wood making handicrafts and sculpture techniques.
"Furniture making is becoming more and more modernized, done by machines, and the traditional handicrafts are gradually losing their popularity. But the old handicraft techniques like the tenon and mortise joint, and sculpturing have great wisdom. So traditional companies like us feel all the responsibility to pass down the skills," said Wang Laifeng, Successor of Tongxinghe Classical Furniture.
While this type of complicated craftwork may have been reserved only for the upper-class in the past, there are also exhibits showing things that were popular for ordinary people back then.
Dough sculptures have always been a hit with kids and adults. At the expo, visitors are taught how to make them with new materials that are easy to preserve, but using the same traditional techniques.
These traditional dough figures and brick sculptures by craftsmen are quite an attraction for visitors at the expo, as always. But as innovation and creation are very much encouraged this year, many new ideas are being presented. They are being seen as new concepts for living...like this one, which shows a different way to use your balcony.
Eating garden-grown vegetables has been promoted in recent years, as it's believed to be cleaner and healthier.
But turning your own balcony into a small piece of farmland? How possible is that?
"It's a trend to have plants growing in cities instead of only on the farmland. What we do is to provide our customers good seeds and teach them advanced agricultural knowledge. The requirement for seeds is very strict because their quality can't vary too much, otherwise non-professional growers wouldn't be able to handle that," said Wang Bo, Chief Manager of ZNXX Agricultural Tech Company.
The 11th China International Cultural and Creative Industry Expo has kicked off in Beijing.
Like Wang Bo, many other exhibitors are also presenting fresh ideas that can be used to improve people's lives. Buying a painted dish is not new, but painting one on your own?
In this booth, the exhibitor is not telling you how to paint, or how to fill the colors, but instead, how to relax and concentrate.
"We are trying to help people to concentrate for a while by coloring the patterns on the china dishes. It can ease the pressures from work and other areas and the easy painting activity can also cut off people's reliance on networks and cell phones for some time," said Li Dapeng, Founder/CEO of Dopin.cn.
The expo runs until October 30th.
