Gold has been long viewed and used as an ornament of preciousness and luxury. Gold is often used to decorate textiles and this process is referred to as gold appliqué. Gold appliqué has a long history in Korea, and there are several records explaining a situation where the government prohibited the use of gold appliqué during the Three Kingdoms era (4-7 CE) due to concerns about the dissipation of the country’s wealth.

Malaysia is a developing nation of Southeast Asia. A few of their famous slogans reflect the diversity of its present ethnic groups in terms of language, customs and traditions inherited from past generations, ‘One Malaysia‘ and ‘Malaysia Truly Asia‘. Malaysia’s cultural fusion is the result of immigration, trade and cultural exchanges over many centuries with Arab nations, China, and India, where the arrival of the first foreigners brought along with them their wealth as well as their cultural heritage and religion. Presently, these ethnic groups still maintain their cultural traditions, but managed to come together to develop Malaysia’s unique and contemporary diverse heritage.

The Philippines, in the tropical waters of the South China Sea at the western edge of the Pacific Ocean, is dry from January to May and rain-swept for the rest of the year, especially during the monsoon months of June to September. The archipelagic country is vulnerable to climatic changes. The balmy ocean air becomes searing heat of 40 degrees Celsius in summer, and the monsoon rains extend in duration with increased volume.

The National Heritage Board of Singapore (NHB) launched an open call for design proposals on 22 July 2021 under its new “Craft X Design” scheme which pairs local traditional craft practitioners with designers or design studios to co-develop and produce new and innovative products using traditional craft techniques and materials.\n\nThe scheme seeks to raise public awareness of local traditional crafts; revitalize and “modernize” the products produced by local traditional craft practitioners; help these practitioners gain access to new markets; and contribute to the long-term sustainability of traditional trades and crafts.\n\nAs part of the scheme, NHB has partnered four local traditional craft practitioners comprising a traditional Chinese lantern-maker; a craftsperson skilled in weaving cases for ketupat (a rice cake wrapped with coconut leaves); a rangoli (a traditional Indian art form involving the creation of a multi-colored floor decoration) artist; and a Peranakan beadwork and embroidery craftsperson.\n\nUnder the open call for design proposals, interested local designers or design studios can attend a workshop conducted by NHB and the four local traditional craft practitioners, and have until 1 October 2021 to prepare and submit their design proposals. Once selected, the successful designers or design studios will have four to five months to work with the local traditional craft practitioners they are paired with to produce a prototype product or a range of products.\n\nThe four local traditional craft practitioners and the successful designers and/or design studios will each receive an honorarium of SGD6,000. Each pair of practitioner and designer can also be reimbursed up to SGD2,000 for materials and/or other costs associated with the production of the prototype product.\n\nThe collaboration will culminate in the production of a prototype product or a range of products from each pair of practitioner and designer/design studio, which would be displayed at a public showcase in April 2022.\n\nThe scheme is part of NHB’s ongoing efforts under Our SG Heritage Plan, Singapore’s first five-year (FY2018-FY2022) masterplan for the heritage and museum sector, to organize public showcases for Singapore’s traditional trades and crafts, and in doing so, to encourage greater public awareness and appreciation of Singapore’s intangible cultural heritage.\n\nTo find out more about Singapore’s “Craft X Design” scheme, please visit: https://go.gov.sg/craftxdesign2021.\n\nPhoto 1 : Mr Jimm Wong, a traditional Chinese lantern-maker © National Heritage Board of Singapore\nPhoto 2 : Ms Vijaya Mohan, a rangoli artist © National Heritage Board of Singapore

The National Heritage Board of Singapore (NHB) recently published the first issue of a two-part series of MUSE SG that focuses solely on Singapore’s intangible cultural heritage (ICH). MUSE SG is NHB’s outreach magazine that features museum and heritage related articles and is distributed to museums, schools, libraries, and public institutions free-of-charge.\n\nFor the two-part series on Singapore’s ICH, NHB has partnered with History Society students from the National University of Singapore (NUS HISSOC) to conduct research and co-create content. The partnership is part of NHB’s youth engagement efforts to interest the younger generation in different aspects of Singapore’s heritage.\n\nThe first ICH issue of MUSE SG introduces readers to the different categories of ICH as defined by UNESCO and explains how the ICH elements in these categories have become an integral part of Singapore’s multicultural identity. The issue is part of NHB’s continuing efforts to promote greater public awareness and appreciation of Singapore’s ICH.\n\nThe National Heritage Board of Singapore (NHB) recently published the first issue of a two-part series of MUSE SG that focuses solely on Singapore’s intangible cultural heritage (ICH). MUSE SG is NHB’s outreach magazine that features museum and heritage related articles and is distributed to museums, schools, libraries, and public institutions free-of-charge.\n\nFor the two-part series on Singapore’s ICH, NHB has partnered with History Society students from the National University of Singapore (NUS HISSOC) to conduct research and co-create content. The partnership is part of NHB’s youth engagement efforts to interest the younger generation in different aspects of Singapore’s heritage.\n\nThe first ICH issue of MUSE SG introduces readers to the different categories of ICH as defined by UNESCO and explains how the ICH elements in these categories have become an integral part of Singapore’s multicultural identity. The issue is part of NHB’s continuing efforts to promote greater public awareness and appreciation of Singapore’s ICH.\n\nVats containing soy beans undergoing fermentation in the production of soya sauce at Tai Hua Food Industries, 2020. Image courtesy of National Heritage Board, Singapore\nIt also features articles on selected ICH elements including traditional Malay dance, traditional Eurasian cuisine, traditional crafts such as effigy making, the production of soya sauce, the practice of rearing songbirds, the ancient healing practice of Ayurveda, and local practices in the commemoration of Easter.\n\nThe second ICH issue of MUSE SG, to be published in January 2021, will focus on the practices and rituals of Jewish Passover by the local Jewish community and the Zoroastrian faith as practiced by the Parsi community in Singapore.\n\nIt will also cover dondang sayang (a poetic art form associated with the Malay and Straits Chinese communities in this region), traditional Chinese music, traditional Nanyang breakfast (comprising toast with kaya spread, half-boiled eggs and a cup of hot tea or coffee) and the craft of Indian goldsmithing.\n\nTo access the first ICH issue of MUSE SG, please click on the following link: https://www.roots.sg/learn/resources/publications/education-and-community-outreach/MUSE-SG-Volume-13-Issue-01\n\nPhoto 1 : Muse Cover © NHB\nPhoto 2 : Vats containing soy beans undergoing fermentation in the production of soya sauce at Tai Hua Food Industries, 2020. Image courtesy of National Heritage Board, Singapore

Nestled in the Himalayas between India and China, Bhutan is considered the only independent Mahayana Buddhist country in the world today. The rich and vibrant local customs, habits and traditions, crafts, and artistic sensibilities, derived from Buddhist teachings and practices, give Bhutan a distinctive identity of its own. Bhutan has conscientiously safeguarded these rich religious and cultural traditions, both tangible and intangible, as being one of the pillars of realizing the developmental philosophy of ‘Gross National Happiness.’

Munmyo is a Confucian shrine in which various spiritual tablets of past Confucian scholars rest. In this shrine, thirty-nine spiritual tablets are enshrined that belong to Confucius, four disciples, sixteen Chinese Confucian scholars, and eighteen Korean Confucian scholars. Currently, the Munmyo shrine is in Sungkyunkwan, which was an institution of higher education during the Joseon dynasty and is now Sungkyunkwan University located in Seoul. Every February and August, according to the lunar calendar, commemorative rites are prepared and called Munmyo Jerye or Seokjeonje. Currently, Seokjeonje is listed as No. 85 on the Important Intangible Cultural Heritage List of Korea, designated in 1986.

Singapore is a tiny Southeast Asian nation-state located in a region with many ethnic groups, of which the Chinese comprise only a small percentage of the overall population. Yet, the Chinese form the majority in Singapore, living alongside a significant proportion of non-Chinese. Over many years, this has led to a Chinese Singaporean identity that is complex and ever-changing.\n\nIn 2020, the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre launched a permanent exhibition to encourage greater appreciation of the distinctiveness of Chinese culture in Singapore through examples of food, festivals, and languages. For the exhibition title to reflect Singapore’s linguistic diversity, the curators invented a word by combining English and Mandarin—the two most widely spoken languages in Singapore. The first element of the title “Singapo” is drawn from the country’s English name while the “人” element is the Chinese character for “person” (pronounced as “ren” in Mandarin). Hence, by reading the two elements together, the exhibition title “ SINGAPO人” sounds like “Singaporean!”\n\nTo provide the context, the exhibition begins with an examination of five key historical socio-geographical aspects about Singapore that led the local Chinese community to develop differently. They comprised the legacy of 150 years of British colonial rule, its location in tropical Southeast Asia, heritage of early Chinese migrants who were mostly from the southern coastal provinces of Fujian and Guangdong, the co-existence of a relatively large proportion of non-Chinese minorities, and Singapore’s reliance on global trade and connectivity for its economic survival.\n\nThese five aspects may be summarized into three basic driving forces that have shaped and continue to shape the Chinese culture in Singapore today. Firstly, there is Chinese heritage, which the early migrants brought to Singapore. These include their values (as reflected in festivals and practices), belief systems, language, customs, and food dishes that originated from China. Secondly, there are the cultural interactions among the different southern Chinese sub-groups (dialect groups) and between the Chinese community and the other ethnic groups in Singapore. These interactions ranged from the casual, such as attending to daily chores, to deeper levels of engagement, such as inter-marriage. These led to changes and adaptations to the way of life of the local Chinese. Thirdly, the Chinese community was also affected by how Singapore was governed. Whether during the colonial period or post-independence, all governments seek to shape society to achieve certain objectives. Hence, the impact of public policies and laws on cultural development is significant.\n\nIn other words, these are the three underlying key ingredients that give the Chinese Singaporean ‘recipe’ its distinct flavor. For instance, this is reflected in the way Chinese New Year is celebrated in Singapore. Firstly, the festival is a tradition that originated in China, and as such, is part of Chinese heritage (first ingredient). Although Chinese New Year does not coincide with the new year of the Gregorian calendar used in Singapore, it is nevertheless a public holiday and held in high regard by the local Chinese because it is a festival that emphasizes family togetherness and filial piety. Secondly, Singaporeans love to eat pineapple tarts and love letters during Chinese New Year. However, these snacks did not originate from China. Rather, they were made popular by the Peranakan (local-born) Chinese who often adopted Western techniques like the baking oven, and Western ingredients such as butter in their cuisine. This type of hybrid food is an example of cultural interaction (second ingredient) at work. Thirdly, during Chinese New Year, Singaporeans enjoy attending local festive events like Chingay and River Hongbao. These are large-scale public events organized by the state or state-sponsored organizations. This is an example of public policies (third ingredient) shaping the way in which Chinese New Year is celebrated in Singapore.\n\nHence, these three ingredients, found in many overseas Chinese communities, were present in the past and continue to exist in Singapore today. The influence of each ingredient varies with time, creating complex outcomes that shape Chinese Singaporean culture.\n\nFor more information about the exhibition SINGAPO 人, please refer to the SCCC website at: https://singaporeccc.org.sg/permanent-exhibition/\n\nPhotos 1~4 : The exhibition uses both physical and digital media content to engage visitors. © Low Sze Wee

The arc of cultural heritage is far broader than many realize. For many, the term calls to mind the physical remains of the past, often in the image of ancient buildings and ruins, or the history of a collective. If prompted to define what heritage encompasses in a personal sense, one might think of their own family’s lineage and ancestry. But in either sense, many of us understand heritage to be something outside of the self rather than something that we are a living part of. We are vehicles for living cultural heritage, not just ethnically, socially, or culturally, but physically. Tangible heritage might be best understood as very much alive, close to home, and applicable to each of us when we consider the body as a context for it.\n\nFrom the way we style our hair and the makeup we paint on our faces to the clothes we choose to wear and the adornments we dress up in, we all adopt insignias of culture and express our identities on the physical plain in modes that have been shaped by heritage. Tattooing is one of these mediums. Inking the skin as to permanently brand ourselves with a visual marker communicates something about who we are or what has touched our lives, to others as much as to ourselves. In this practice, the unseen intangible heritage and identity we know and feel is transformed into something tangible and corporeal.\n\nWe are hardly the first people to manipulate the body in such a way. Tattooing has a long history, a tradition adopted from ancient cultures from the Alps to Mongolia, from Greenland to China, from Egypt to Mexico, from Russia to the South Pacific. Whether marking the skin of a newly initiated member of a group, a tribe leader, a spiritual worshipper, a loyal warrior, or an outcast criminal, tattoos carried their potential to express diverse meanings into more recent history and the modern day. We’re all familiar with the sailor’s anchor, the Indian bride’s henna, the biker’s skull and crossbones, the adoption of the tribal tattoo or Chinese character in Western popular culture. But what stands out is not so much the range of meanings and contexts that tattoos might indicate, but rather the instinct to mark one’s skin in a permanent way, a tale as old as time.\n\nIt is striking to me that no matter where in the world these practices developed, so many diverse groups of indigenous ancestors were inclined to physically demarcate themselves and others, developing a technique of self-expression that would live on. I wonder why.\n\nMaybe they all recognized how powerful the skin can be as a medium for message-bearing. Upon this visible and undetachable bodily canvas, the way one is seen by others is manipulated from the first glance. As we dance through this ancient-turned-modern ritual today, whether the symbols we choose speak for themselves or inspire questions about who we are or where we’ve been, we consider ourselves branded for life.\n\nBut ‘for life’ and forever are not the same thing. In the past and at present, tattoos represent an attempt at permanence that is almost endearing in its falsehood. Though the ink on the skin itself may be unremovable, the skin and body itself is not eternal. The corpses discovered across Europe, Asia, the Americas and Oceania that attest to the long history of tattooing remind us that ‘undoable’ physical manipulations we make will last only as long as the body does. Whatever we regard as permanent is never really such, and after a time the tangible becomes intangible, whether we are referring to body or brick. Palpable proof becomes a fairy tale, man becomes myth. The physical is not perpetual, and tangible heritage does not last forever just because it takes material form.\n\nIt’s within this ongoing cycle of permanence and impermanence that cultural heritage is situated. Though we feel compelled to preserve the flesh of the past on personal and broader scales, matter is more delicate than we often accept, and the risk of disintegration is always looming. Tattooing is a poignant example of one of the most effective ways to retain the substance of the past as centuries go by: to keep it alive in practice, even if not in the exact form it once took, with the stories of where it came from accessible for inspiration.\n\nMore of Issabella’s work is available at museandwander.co.uk\n\nPhoto : Traditional Tattooing Tools

The China National Silk Museum (CNSM) first opened in February 1992 and reopened in September 2016. Now it has become one of the first state-level museums in China, where audiences will find 9,000 square meters of displays in a typical southern Chinese garden of 42,286 square meters near West Lake, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Migrant Resource Centre Inc. (MRC) in Southern Tasmania has launched Inspire, an innovative and vibrant program connecting Tasmanian performing artists to a broader community. The project’s website introduces a range of artists—migrants and refugees alike—bringing multicultural creative practices to the fore. They are talented individuals and groups of musicians, dancers, and public speakers who have been selected for their exceptional cultural skills and their ability to deliver professional performances in a range of settings. Tasmanian Chinese Community, for example, can present 56 different Chinese ethnic performances incorporated with traditional Chinese instruments. The Neeraalaya School of Dance is Tasmania’s premier Bharatanatyam dance troupe while Shuang Zhang is a conservatorium trained Chinese opera singer and dancer.\n\nInspire is funded by the Tasmanian government, Department of State Growth, while its website receives funding from the Tasmanian government, Department of Premier and Cabinet, Communities, Sport and Recreation. On its website, the performing artists are shown with a brief introduction about their own stories and expertise.1. The public can access the site and request performer(s) accordingly.\n\nThe performing artists get every opportunity to showcase their talents; in return, already-existing communities can experience their distinct performance for free. They say it is generating “common benefit and mutual prosperity.” MRC is not just giving the performing artists an online platform but more importantly it is helping them receive appropriate professional training to further refine their competence. Also, bi-cultural workers and volunteers have supported Inspire participants throughout the program. It is expected that this project can contribute to settle cultural sustainable development in Tasmania.\n\nPhoto : Karen Choir Hobart - The Karen people are a culturally and linguistically diverse ethnic group

The seventh month of the lunar calendar is regarded as a month in which the gates of heaven and hell are opened so that ghosts and spirits, including deceased ancestors, can come back to visit the living in China and other Asian countries with Chinese migrants, such as Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The fifteenth day of the month is called Zhongyuan Jie (中元節) in China, Baekjung (百中) in Korea, Obon (お盆) in Japan, and the Hungry Ghost Festival in other countries. The day’s story origin derives from an old Buddhist tale about Mu Lian.1.\nMu Lian, one of Buddha’s disciples, converted to Buddhism after losing his parents at a young age. As his longing for his mother grew stronger, his clairvoyance found her suffering from ravenous appetites that could not be satisfied in hell. He tried to offer food to his mother, but the food burned into ashes when it touched her mouth. Mu Lian asked Buddha about how he could relieve his mother’s suffering. When he prepared food offerings as directed by Buddha, his mother was saved from suffering. This tale developed into a Buddhist ritual2. to offer food for ancestors and was combined with Taoist tradition to celebrate Zhongyuan Jie. At Zhongyuan Jie, people hold memorial services for ancestors and other spirits.\n\nIn Singapore, people prepare ritualistic food offerings and burn incense and joss paper in front of their apartments, stores, or companies for their ancestors’ visiting spirits. They murmur prayers while burning joss paper and go round in a circle with nobody else getting inside. Some even burn miniature paper houses, cars, and smartphones. Unlike most countries that hold traditional rites, the city-state celebrates Zhongyuan Jie in a more modern way. A getai3. is held at vacant lots or parking lots during the Ghost Festival. Getai performances were usually of Chinese operas or puppet shows in the past. Now they have evolved into various forms, including songs, dances, and stand-up comedy. A getai performance usually begins with jokes and comedy, using various languages such as Mandarin, Hokkien (a Southern Min Chinese dialect originating from Fujian Province), English, Malay, and Indian. The first row is left empty so that the spirits can sit and enjoy the performance comfortably. Although getai performances have been modernized, all the songs and dances serve the same purpose of consoling dead souls and pleasing the king of the underworld.\n\nDuring the festival, evil spirits come out with ancestral spirits. There are taboos to protect innocent people from evil spirits, such as going home late and swimming so as not to be pulled by water ghosts. People are also recommended not doing new things, like a trip, wedding, or risky movements, to avoid curses from evil spirits. They should spend their time in a more religious and controlled way than usual.\n\nSingaporean authorities have made various social and cultural efforts to preserve the Ghost Festival and pass it on to future generations. Singapore’s Taoist and Buddhist Federations have encouraged devotees to burn offerings responsibly as Nanyang Technological University scientists found that concentrations of small pollutant particles increased by 60 percent during the Hungry Ghost Festival, saying that it is not a case of “the more the merrier” since it is sincerity that counts. Singapore has grown based on coexistence and harmony among various peoples. As such, it emphasizes respect for different cultures even when enjoying a festival, highlighting that such celebrations should not be limited to a certain group. Collective efforts at all levels of society have made the Hungry Ghost Festival open to all people in Singapore. This festival provides lessons on how to discuss and resolve social issues and ethnic conflicts amid the progress of globalization.\n\nPhoto : Hungry ghost prayer table CCBYSA3.0 Mezanurrahman (Wikimedia)