From ‘Being Absent’ to ‘the Right Place’: The Predicament of China’s Sports and Games Intangible Cultural Heritage at the Level of Inheritance Subject and its Relief

As a major part of fine traditional Chinese culture, traditional sports and games(TSG) as intangible cultural heritage(ICH) performs an important role in increasing confidence of our own culture, promoting the construction of a socialist country with a strong culture and a sports power, as well as enhancing the soft power of sports culture. However, the inheritance of TSG as ICH has long been limited by the key element of “people”, and the absence of the inheritance subject has become an urgent issue to address, in view of the academic community's call to “let the subject perform its part” and the real demand for the inheritance of “living heritage”. We made an attempt to define the subject of TSG as ICH inheritance and elaborated on the significance of the inheritance subject to TSG as ICH. The absence of the inheritance subject of TSG as ICH has produced impacts in three aspects:cognitive issues that remain inheritance barriers, the absence of inheritance subject that has aggravated the heritage transmission crisis, and the multiple factors affecting the heritage transmission practice. After an analysis, we believe that the loss of the inheritance subject of TSG as ICH can be corrected according to this logic of “improve cognition-increase quantity-practice autonomously”. Built upon this basis, we proposed the following paths for the inheritance subject to be in “the right place”:1) Improving the cognitive ability of individuals and the establishment of group cognition process to enhance the embodied cognition and conceptual renewal of the inheritance subject; 2) optimizing the inheritance environment from the two dimensions:natural environment and social environment, to “solidify foundation and increase the quantity” of the inheritance subject; specifically,to awaken the consciousness of the inheritance subject through the creation of native cultural space, to promote the return of the inheritance subject to where they belong through the restoration of production and living space; 3) stimulating the endogenous motivation of the inheritance subject for automatic and conscious inheritance from three aspects: sports events, public services for national fitness, and the integration of inheritance platforms.