Boysun district, in southern Uzbekistan, has a beautiful natural landscape and is surrounded by a mountain range. The local environment and geographic isolation created favorable conditions for unique local intangible cultural heritage forms and expressions to form and be preserved over time. The same conditions also led to the existence of various types of labor activities, such as agriculture, cattle breeding, and handicrafts.

Co-orgarnized by ICHCAP and Hue Monuments Conservation Centre (HMCC), this year’s Asia-Pacific ICH NGO Conference was held in Hue, Vietnam under the theme of ICH NGOs towards Sustainable Development of Communities.

In Buddhism, deities and gods are imagined as either male or female. They can appear either calm and peaceful or fierce and frantic. Generally, the more peaceful gods are the deities of harmony, aesthetics, kindness, diligence, and so on whereas the fierce ones are the guardians whose role is to threaten and daunt the demons.

A triad of spring festive rites—biye baylau, ayghyr kosu, and kymyz murundyk, identified and documented in Terisakkan Village in the northern outskirts of Ulytau District, Central Kazakhstan—is a testimony to nomadic culture surviving up to today. Regarded by its bearers as the most important annual festive event, it starts in early May with first spring warmth, new grass, flowers, and foals, opening a new year-round cycle of life reproduction and a new season of making koumiss, an ancient sacred drink.

Food plays an important role in spiritual rituals and worship for many faiths including Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism. The food offered to God is called prasada/prasadam, which means a gracious gift. Prasadam could be any o!ering, but typically an edible food is firrst o!ered to a deity in his or her name.

Torn apart by decades of conflict, post-2003 Afghanistan was on the brink of an economic, social, and cultural collapse. Besides the much-mediatized shelling of the country’s material heritage, such as the Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan’s intangible heritage equally took an untold toll. In addition to various practices that had been directly targeted and proscribed (such as making the rubab, a short-necked lute), a general weakening of the national economy, disruption of raw material procurement networks, and an overall destruction of the social fabric put a majority of Afghanistan’s heritage at risk. Particularly threatened were its craftsmen, the stewards of woodcarving, goldsmithing, or miniature techniques, skills firmly rooted in more than 3,000 years of artistic traditions and defining features of many of the country’s communities.

Azerbaijan is one of the countries whose history is inextricably linked with the Silk Road. From ancient times, the network trade routes connecting the east with the west and the south with the north crossed the territory of Azerbaijan.

In 2017, Tajikistan ratified the 2003 Convention. Two years later, the Tajik government passed a decree and project to take place between 2013 and 2020. The goals of this project were to safeguard ICH from disappearing; reviving traditions; helping and supporting performers and masters; endorsing cultural elements accessible for wide use; studying and preparing books, films, and musical discs; and organizing folk festivals, cultural competitions, and other exhibitions. The festivals have several social and cultural functions due to their continuity. Infestivals, a person experiences his/her membership in society and feels the collective solidarity. Festivals also include didactic elements, mainly structuring the young generation in the task of responsibility among other members of the society; they should follow prescribed social and cultural norms. At the same time, festival also function on a psychological level, giving people a sense of national or ethnic identity and building social integration, solidarity, thus creating an atmosphere of friendship.

Khon is one of the most significant performing arts of Thailand. It is an important traditional dance and art style dated from the Ayutthaya period. It has its own unique identity and integrates different fields of art, literature, rituals, and crafts.

Based on the notion of culture as a complex multi-layered phenomenon, we admit that some cultural elements or expressions may fluidly migrate and adapt to different local settings, not necessarily or exclusively serving as a marker of an ethnic identity. Moreover, an emerging concept of shared cultural heritage allows us to disclose positive potential for joining efforts in safeguarding and enlivening the cultural heritage of the people. Connecting various national and local cultures along the Silk Roads aims exactly at gaining the joy of sharing the values, wisdom, creativity; at nurturing mutual interests and empathy among cultures and people; and at searching for common threads across the rich multitude of manifestations of cultural heritage of a vast region. The joint initiative by ICHCAP and IICAS to launch the Silk Roads ICH Networking Program needs support and actions by the wide range of stakeholder organizations and groups. Two options might be considered for a Silk Roads ICH Festivals network—either establish its own training program, capitalizing on the European Festivals Association’s experience or—cooperate with EFA on arranging a special edition of their Festival Academy focused on ICH and open for young managers from within the new network.

In the traditional food system of the Kyrgyz, among the products available to the general population were milk and dairy products. Dairy food among the Kyrgyz was very diverse, similar to that of the peoples of wider Central Asia, Altai, and South Siberia. The Kyrgyz used sheep, cow, and mare’s milk, and to a lesser extent that of goats and camels. The people of the inner Tien Shan, Alai, and Pamir mountainous areas also used yak milk, notable for its high fat content. The Kyrgyz made limited use of whole milk—it was given to children, and indeed is still given to children, mixed with various types of cottage cheese, sometimes for medicinal and nutritional purposes.

Wedding ceremonies play an important role in social life of the Uzbek people. Embodying various traditions, rituals, and celebrations, weddings are important lifetime events since they mark the birth of a new family. But a wedding is not only a union of two young people and launching of a new life but also a solemn rite of entry into important social norms and a continuation of the family legacy.