Until the last moments of the drafting process of the Convention, the Intergovernmental Meeting of Experts was debating the issue of whether the Convention should employ a listing system or a registration system. The Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage was finally adopted in October 2003 using a listing system. Some of the experts who were not in favor of this system are still criticizing it today. Today, the Convention has 155 States Parties. There are 288 elements inscribed on the two lists and a selection of ten elements on the Registry of Best Practices. The inscription of elements of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) on the Lists has triggered unprecedented enthusiasm for the ICH among practitioner communities as well as the general public. The Chengdu International Conference held last June to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the UNESCO Convention discussed the listing system currently being used and identified points concerning, on the one hand, the procedure for inscription on the Lists and, on the other, the impact of public recognition on the inscribed elements and their practitioners. This paper offers some suggestions that might be taken to mitigate the problems raised, such that the Convention will not become the victim of its own success.

Listed on the UNESCO Register of Good Safeguarding Practices, the Oselvar boat was resurrected from near-extinction when the Os Båtbyggjarlag Boat-Builders Guild, Os municipality, and Hordaland County founded the non-profit boatyard and workshop foundation Oselvarverkstaden in 1997 with the support of the Arts Council Norway. The Oselvar boat used to be western Norway’s main mode of transportation and, as predominantly known, it is a Norwegian cultural icon that symbolizes the kingdom’s leisure craft. On the other hand, Costa Rica’s carreta or traditional oxcart is the Central American country’s most famous craft. Inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008 (though originally proclaimed in 2005), the traditional oxcart used to transport coffee beans in a ten-to-fifteen-day journey, from Costa Rica’s central valley over the mountains to Puntaneras on the Pacific coast. As a mode of transport, it lingers on a mobility that is built around agriculture, transcending a cultural aesthetics informed by rural imaginary. The presence alone of carreta is an explicit call to end deforestation and be much more mindful about climate change. The Oselvar boat of Norway and Costa Rica’s traditional oxcart are two living examples of the creative union between transportation and craft so that we may see public transportation as a cultural understanding of intangible heritage.\n\nThe South Asian nation of Pakistan, with its twenty-six national highways and three strategic highways, does not shy away from parading the abundance and importance of ICH in public roads. Pakistan’s truck art, the largest art industry in the country, is a living construction of identity by making visible a host of cultural signifiers, from religious piety to popular imagination. Albeit there is no economic benefit from decorating a truck, and even though such undertaking costs at least a whooping USD 2000 back in 2011, it has been the norm, according to Jamal J. Elias, for fleet owners to have their trucks decorated. Since 96% of the freight in Pakistan is carried by trucks, one can easily imagine the widespread presence of truck art. Focusing on the art in the craft of vehicular decoration, as well as on pleasure, protection, and suffering experienced by truck drivers, Anna Schmid contends that truck art is a form of popular culture in which central societal assumptions and values are contested in that truck art, by the very process of putting it in the public sphere, puts social mobility in a terrain bounded by semiotics or the study of signs and how these signs meaningfully interact with each other in religious, political, and cultural terms. Schmid draws truck construction by highlighting the specialized craftsmen principally responsible for it: blacksmiths (who attach a steel skeleton to the chassis to hold the body and the driver’s cabin), the body makers (who create the body composed of wooden pine slats held together by metal and wooden cross-pieces), lacquerers (who spray paint the body), upholsterers (who install the seat of the cabin), and the painters (who apply motifs and other necessary decorations).\n\nUnsuspecting the ethnic diversity of Pakistani society, on the basis of categorical decorative motifs such as explicit religious symbols and images, talismanic and fetish objects, talismanically or religiously loaded symbols, idealized elements of life, elements from modern life, the non-religious calligraphic program of the truck, Jamal J. Elias, a scholar who thoroughly examined the typologies and evolution of truck art and proposed five regional styles of truck art: Punjabi, Swati, Peshawar, Baluchi, and Karachi styles.\n\nTruck art is an exemplary case to theorize that the process of understanding ICH is a public work, a work that compels mediation and collective valuation. Something that transforms personal sentiments into public feelings. And what’s more interesting about the truck art of Pakistan, other than it being an industry of its own, is its direct connection to transportation—that a vessel practically meant to transport a commodity from one place to another actually carries something more than what it does, and it does beyond time and place, connecting cities and regions that ultimately become unknowable large-scale social processes. Indeed, when a symbol travels, its meaning exponentially multiplies.\n\nPhoto : Truck art ⓒ B.B.P. Hosmillo

Derived from a Buddhist belief, the Hae Pha Khuen That Festival is centuries-old and still practiced to today. The event is a gathering of Buddhists parading in streets, carrying cloth called pha bot to wrap around the stupa that houses the relic of Buddha. According to the legend, the tradition of wrapping cloth around the stupa originated during the reign of the King Si Thamma Sokkarat, the first monarch of the Tam Porn Link Kingdom and founder of Nakorn Si Thammarat. At that time, the stupa had been just built, and the king heard that some people on a voyage to Sri Lanka to bring pha bot as an offering had sunk into the sea due to a violent storm. The King then decided to bring the cloth to wrap around the newly made stupa to pay homage to Buddha and celebrate his new constructed relic house.\n\nNowadays, Hae Pha Khuen That takes place yearly at Wat Phra Mahathat Worramahawihan, a royal temple in Nakorn Si Thammarat Province in southern Thailand, where the aforementioned stupa is located. The event is held on the full moon day of the third lunar month (Makha Bucha Day), a religious holiday; it usually falls in February. This year, it will be held from 13 to 19 February 2019. The most important activity of the event is carrying the pha bot to warp around the main stupa, inside of which is the relic of Buddha. Locals of Nakorn Si Thammarat and people from other parts of Thailand are expected to take part in a parade carrying more than a thousand yards of yellow or white cloth from the main city to the temple and walk around the stupa three times before covering the stupa with the cloth. It is believed that participating in the activity brings good luck to life and families.\n\nIn addition to wrapping cloth around the main stupa, there will be lots of entertainment and cultural activities such as chants, sermons, meditation, food offerings, exhibitions, and a cultural product market as well as light and sound shows all day and all night during the festival. Hae Pha Khuen That is famous all over Thailand. In 2014, Hae Pha Khuen That Festival was inscribed by the Department of Cultural Promotion, Ministry of Culture, as National ICH in the category of Social Practices, Rituals and Festival. The festival has been in practice for generations, celebrating the blessing of and faith in Buddha.\n\nA festival guide for 2019 is available online at http://www.thaifestivalblogs.com/hae-pha-khuen-that-festival/\n\nPhoto : Hae Pha Khuen That Festival @ Department of Cultural Promotion of Thailand