An exhibition of beldemchi was launched at the Gapar Aitiev Fine Arts Museum in Bishkek on 7 June 2017. The exhibition is still ongoing through the partnership of the Kiyiz Duino Foundation and the Gapar Aitiev Fine Arts Museum, an institution named after one of the first Soviet Kyrgyz artists who became a national artist of the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954. The exhibition displays more than forty items collected from state museums and private collections. It represents all regions of the country and various embroidery styles and techniques. The event is a sign of increasing interest in beldemchi in Kyrgyz society; renowned designers are already coming up with unique beldemchi design.\n\nOne of the Kyrgyz ICH elements, beldemchi is a traditional women’s skirt worn over a dress, gown, and sometimes thin coat. Conventionally, women wear their first beldemchi after a severe stress, e.g. first labor or situations demanding warmth. When worn as postpartum clothing, beldemchi helps women correcting their posture. It also gives physical support. Historically, as Kyrgyz people led a nomadic lifestyle in inland continental climate conditions during pre-Soviet times until 1917, beldemchi was an essential part of Kyrgyz women’s traditional apparel.\n\nBeldemchi may be worn daily and in holidays or festive events. It is made up of velvet and silk adorned with embroidery. The embroidery could cover either the whole skirt or its edges. Viewed as a protective amulet against evil eye, jinxes, and other unpleasant troubles, it is also a determinant of a woman’s age, social status, region, and her artistic skills based on the composition, style, and quality of the embroidery since every woman is supposed to know how to make a beldemchi and its embroidery. The main base of beldemchi is a double-leaved swing skirt with wide and thick belt. Beldemchi has several regional differences. In the north where the winter season is cold and long, it is mainly a wraparound flared skirt from warm fabric with a thick band over the belt. In the south, beldemchi is a buttoned front open cut skirt.\n\nThe presentation of beldemchi at the exhibition displays how the making of traditional clothing for women has gradually turned into a field of rich female creativity. Notwithstanding, beldemchi has started to disappear from Kyrgyz everyday life, which may have been caused by the changing views and lifestyle. During the Soviet modernism in the 1960s, wearing beldemchi was a sign of backwardness and provincialism. Soon in the 1970s, it fell into disuse. However, elderly women in rural areas have kept wearing beldemchi until now.\n\nPhoto : Women wearing Beldemchi © Kyiz Duino Fund

Cultural heritage in Vietnam is a valuable property of the Vietnamese people and the foundation for national traditions that have formed over many generations. With more than 40,000 cultural heritage elements and sites, Vietnam has highly respected treasures to be introduced to the rest of the world whenever possible. Taking care of cultural heritage means regarding what the past, present, and imaginable future have engendered to improve national identity.\n\nAfter Vietnam’s independence in 1945, and on behalf of provisional government of Democratic Republic of Vietnam, President Ho Chi Minh signed Decree No 65 on 23 November 1945. The decree formally mandates conserving antique vestiges, or what will later be known as cultural heritage. Based on the concept of conservation and to promote tradition and Vietnamese cultural heritage, the Prime Minister approved Decision No 36/2005/QD-TTg on 24 January 2005 to officially set 23 November as Vietnam’s Cultural Heritage Day. The November holiday is festive with many educational events that explain what it means to be responsible for protecting cultural heritage and why it is important to do so.\n\nTo celebrate this year’s Cultural Heritage Day, events are being prepared by relevant institutions. In the Ho Guom Cultural Information Centre, a photo exhibition on Vietnamese heritage will be held, featuring the winning photos of the 2017 Vietnam Heritage Photo Awards. The exhibition will take place in front of the center in Hanoi and will then move to other cities through March 2018. In the Vietnam Exhibition Centre for Culture and Arts,Green Heritage Culture and Tourism Week will be organized under the theme “The Convergence of Human and Nature”, gathering nationwide communities together to exchange and introduce their lasting cultural values.

India is the repository of an astounding wealth of intangible heritage with distinctive qualities of its own. The variety of geophysical features of India reflects its cultural diversity, from the Himalayan peaks to the sea coast, river-fed plains, marshlands, and deserts, all of which has helped shape its intangible culture in consonance with nature. India is a pluralistic society that combines different religions, faiths, racial communities, languages, and cultures. It has a wide range of artistic activities, traditional knowledge systems, folklore, performing arts and festivals, with about eight hundred dialects, and more than twenty officially recognized languages, several faiths, various styles of art, architecture, literature, music, dance, and lifestyle patterns from the urban and rural to the tribal.

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 geography of Korea is ideal for growing lacquer trees. Optimal climate, topography, and soil conditions can be found across the country, and the lacquer produced is of the highest quality. This led to lacquerware crafts being highly valued in Korea over the years, and a uniquely Korean culture of lacquerware being developed.

Since ancient times, Central Asia has been populated by numerous nomadic and sedentary peoples and ethnic groups. The region is characterized by a rich cultural diversity as well as the interaction and interpenetration of different cultures, each of which is original.

It has become recognized nowadays that cultural heritage encompasses more than collections of objects or monuments; it includes just as much also intangible manifestations such as traditions and living expressions. This intangible cultural heritage (ICH) stretches into a wide range of domains of our society, such as performing arts, social practices, oral traditions, rituals and festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature, and the knowledge and skills used to produce traditional crafts.

The information society built on the development of information and communication technology (ICT) is bringing about revolutionary change to humanity, such as the smooth dissemination of knowledge and information, promotion of communication, and an enhanced quality of living even if accompanied by other negative effects. Growing access to the internet is completely revising the very meaning of information services, thus creating a new environment. The possibilities of networking, mutual cooperation, and digitization created in this environment is effecting fundamental change in the functions of information acquisition, storage, and dissemination.\nSuch development in ICT presents new approaches in the field of cultural heritage as well. The appropriate utilization of ICT in the safeguarding and promotion of ICH is inspiring hope for a whole new ICH safeguarding system, going beyond traditional methods. Making ICH-related knowledge and information more accessible and usable to a larger public through ICT will contribute to ICH safeguarding and cultural diversity.

Dibya Jyoti Borah, President of ARHI introduces the role of ARHI in safeguarding of ICH. Established in 2008, ARHI is collaboration of individuals belonging to the indigenous tribe, activist working for the cultural-educational rights of native people. It is a wider platform for all indigenous communities to discuss and reflect upon challenges and problems faced by indigenous communities as well as finding the best means to address those concerns. It is a grassroots organization comprising all small & big indigenous communities.

Laos is host to a diversity of cultures, traditions, and arts. While the handicraft heritage of the country, such as textile production, is widely promoted, documented, and commercialized, its rich musical traditions remain largely unknown and underestimated. The same could be said of its built heritage – much work and funding has gone into stabilizing or renovating architecture and buildings, particularly religious sites of national importance. Intangible cultural traditions, such as how to sing traditional songs, how to make instruments, and how to play certain instruments, are being left by the wayside. Due to its specific topography and the variety of ethnic groups inhabiting Laos, the country hosts an impressive diversity of musical styles. Singing is the most common form of musical expression in Laos. Traditional popular songs are called “khap” in the north and “lam” in the south. Traditional singing of Laos (khap-lam) is also used as symbol of ethnic identity, as each group has its own melodic model or musical style. While a rich knowledge exists about music, it is rarely explicitly verbalized, as most musical practices are implicitly learned through processes of listening/observation and imitation. Today, however, documenting and safeguarding this ancestral knowledge is urgent, as new media and changing social mores lead to changes in traditional mechanisms of transmission.

In the 70 years of national division, the society and culture of the two Koreas have moved very far apart, through severance of ties, alienation, and the rule of hostile ideologies in the Korean War and Cold War era. The North Korean society and culture borne of dogmatic communism and armed with Juche ideology feels too different and unacceptable to South Koreans awash in liberal capitalism. I personally have a deeper understanding and greater acceptance than the average since I met with North Korean bureaucrats frequently and made several visits to North Korea in my former role at a UNESCO organization, but still would never be able to adapt to life in North Korean society. Just as we find it difficult to accept their invocations of the great leader and inflexible expressions about capitalism and imperialism, the North Koreans reject terms like liberty, human rights and civic society as bourgeois ideology. This difference in political regime and ideology has created heterogeneity between the two Koreas in every aspect of society and culture- education, culture, arts, religion, theater and movies. The heterogeneity and hostility in political and economic regimes make reconciliation or unification difficult. However, if the heterogeneity in culture, arts and lifestyles intensifies, even the establishment of a peace community, let alone peaceful unification, would appear to be an impossibility. Overcoming differences in ideology to achieve national unity (as proclaimed in the July 4th Joint Statement) does not seem possible.

The main contents of this publication are reports from thirty-two nations collected by ICHCAP from 2009 to 2015 as part of its annual projects to collect information on intangible cultural heritage safeguarding in the Asia-Pacific region. We have also compiled information from other reports and conference materials collected by ICHCAP to present key data, such as national inventories and information on related organizations, in an easily accessible format.