The National Institute of Folk & Traditional Heritage, popularly known as Lok Virsa, was established by the government of Pakistan in 1974 with a mandate to collect, document, preserve, and disseminate Pakistan’s tangible and intangible cultural heritage.

The first APHEN-ICH Capacity-Building Workshop on the Linking 2003 Convention and University ICH Programs was held in 2019 in Shanghai. Following the first APHEN-ICH Capacity-Building Workshop, ICHCAP holds second Workshop to develop ICH curriculum and implement it into the higher education institutes reflecting the global capacity-building strategy of UNESCO, and the spirit of 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage. As a part of the capacity building workshop, ICHCAP and UNESCO Bangkok Office are organizing a webinar session open to the public to raise professor and researchers’ interest in developing ICH related courses and curriculum.

The Miao people are a linguistically and culturally related ethnic group who settled in the Chinese provinces of Guizhou, Yunnan, Hunan, and Guangxi. While the Miao are disbursed over a large area and are subdivided into several different branches, they share a common heritage element called the circle dance. Often accompanied by a lusheng (a bamboo musical instrument), the circle dance is the most important dance and the most popular among all Miao branches. The wood drum dance is popular among the Fanpai Miao in Taijiang County, Guizhou province.

Samarkand, a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the oldest urban centers, has long storied relationship with music. Archaeological findings, such as the 3,000-year-old flute discovered around the old city, tell us that music culture has ancient roots in Central Asia. Additional studies provide evidence that the ud, a medieval variant of a lute, was spread throughout the orient much earlier than it was in Europe. One of the biggest influences on the music culture of Samarkand was its unique position as a crossroad of the Great Silk Road, a situation that allowed the melding of musical traditions from throughout Asia. In support and recognition of its ancient traditions in music and its position as a crossroad, President Islam Karimov of the Republic of Uzbekistan initiated an international music festival called Sharq Taronalari (Melodies of the Orient).

Cambodia is rich in both tangible and intangible cultural heritage. In terms of the tangible, scattered throughout the Kingdom are many prehistoric and historic sites brick, laterite, and sandstone temples, irrigation systems, and other cultural elements. To date, two Cambodian archaeological sites have been registered as World Heritage Sites, the Angkor region in 1992 and the Preah Vihear temples in 2008. At the same time, the Kingdom also has many different forms of intangible cultural heritage, such as arts and crafts, traditional music and dance, traditional customs, and ritual practices. Of the many living heritage elements in Cambodia, UNESCO registered the Royal Ballet of Cambodia and the Khmer Shadow Theatre to the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2003 and 2005, respectively.

The scale of traditional herbal medicine knowledge in East Asia is enormous. One example that shows us this is the work of Seo Yu-gu (1764–1845), a Confucian scholar of the Joseon dynasty in the nineteenth century. He wrote Imwon-Kyungjeji, an encyclopedia compiling almost all the contemporary East Asian knowledge. This book was nicknamed Britannica of Joseon because it covered the overall knowledge fields of human life—agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, cooking, brewing, construction, civil engineering, crafts, calligraphy, music, commerce, and medicine. Surprisingly, about half of the entire work is about medicinal knowledge, occupying 1.2 million characters of the total 2.5 million characters. This means half of the traditional knowledge in East Asia is related to the treatment of diseases and maintaining human health.

"The Cook Islands are fifteen islands scattered over an area of 2 million square kilometres of ocean. Situated near the centre of Eastern Polynesia, the islands lie within close proximity of the French Polynesia archipelago to the east and the Samoa islands to the west. \nIn 1965 the Cook Islands gained a status of internal self-governing and the establishment of the Legislative Assembly, then Parliament thereon after…..and so began the Cook Islands journey into shaping itself as a nation. \nIn the 1970s, the government realised the importance of oral history and especially the traditional knowledge possessed by the elders of the nation. This led to the establishment of the Tumu Korero division to collect, record, and document oral histories. These are currently housed in the National Archives, and George Baniani, the Manager of the National Archives, was a member of the team that implemented this project. The intention of the government was to have these oral histories published and fed into the education system as resources for our children. \nIn 1992, the Cook Islands hosted the Festival of Pacific Arts and a fantastic cultural complex was erected to house the Ministry of Cultural Development, but more importantly, the National Auditorium to showcase the vibrant performing arts of the Cook Islands. This building itself has fostered the development of the performing arts and has ensured the rapid growth and enormous interest in the arts, especially from the younger generation of Cook Islanders. \nThe theme of the Festival of Arts was traditional navigation, and it highlighted the knowledge and skills our ancestors held in overcoming this great expanse of ocean. They had the knowledge of the stars, wave patterns, and migratory birds to guide them from island to island. They settled and populated islands from as far as Palau of the Micronesian islands to Rapanui in the far east of Polynesia, and this was accomplished a thousand years before Columbus crossed the Atlantic. "

Karate is commonly regarded as a traditional Japanese martial art, which was developed on the island of Okinawa. Okinawa belonged to the Ryūkyū Kingdom (1429–1879)—an independent state that held diplomatic, cultural, and economic relations with Japan, China, Korea, and other Asian countries. The Ryūkyū Kingdom had a highly transactional culture with a history of cultural exchange in East and Southeast Asia. Karate, generally known as / (hand) or / (China-hand), blended the indigenous fighting systems of Okinawa with influences from Chinese and most likely other Asian martial arts, worldviews, and folk spiritualities into a cultural practice that became rooted in Okinawan society. Today, karate is a weaponless martial art in which punches and kicks are utilized. Due to its history and social as well as cultural relevance, the prefectural government of Okinawa has, since the 1990s, been actively seeking to inscribe Okinawa karate on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) of Humanity. However, karate will also make its debut as an exhibition sport at the rescheduled Olympic Games due to be held in Tokyo in 2021. According to the World Karate Federation (WKF), about 100 million people practice karate around the world (WKF, 2014). With a transcendence that goes far beyond its sportive side, karate, as a cultural icon both of modernity and “tradition,” has become a Japanese cultural export incorporated into the global sporting culture.

The Central Asian region is a unique area where centuries-old civilisations, religions, and cultures have intersected. The region’s ICH provides the basis for historical self-identification of the people that inhabit the region, and this ICH has influence on their future spiritual development. The ancestral heritage is intertwined in a vast cultural material, which reveals itself in folklore, legends, festivals, and games; in the rules and norms of social behaviour; in music, songs, and dances; and in national costumes as well as in decorative and applied arts and crafts.

The Taumako voyaging arts include a wind-position based, systematic model of wayfinding, complex swell patterns not yet reported for other traditions, weather modification, and ancestral lights that signal the direction and distance of land. In this paper I observe that transmission of the ancient voyaging arts has promoted cultural fulfillment, and can result in greater resiliency and sustainability once a basic skill levels have been mastered and partnerships between islands have been re-established.

Located in the southern part of the Red River Delta, Ha Nam province bears cultural traces of the ancient Viet, where such typical cultural heritages as Trần Thương Temple Festival, Tịch Điền festival (the annual plowing festival), drum making craft of Đọi Tam village, weaving craft of Nha Xá village, martial arts of Liễu Đôi village, etc have been preserved. This land is also famous for a rich and valuable treasure of literature and folk performing arts such as Dậm - Quyển Sơn singing, Lải Lèn singing and especially Trong quan singing that hardly seen in any localities.

This publication contains papers from the 2021 World Intangible Cultural Heritage Forum held online for three days, from September 29 to October 1, 2021. The event was hosted by the National Intangible Heritage Center and organized by ICHCAP.\n\nThe forum was held under the theme of “Rediscovering Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Era of Convergence and Creativity” to re-examine the creative value of intangible cultural heritage and present the possibilities by examining examples of innovation and value creation through intangible cultural heritage.