Study on the Conceptual Evolution and Local Definition in China: From “Intangible Cultural Heritage” to “Sports Intangible Cultural Heritage”

As the world's understanding of cultural heritage deepens, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization(UNESCO) built a worldwide discourse system of intangible cultural heritage(ICH) by adopting the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage(the Convention). Afterward, individual countries to the Convention successively issued a series of laws, policies, and recommendations to explain or further the connotations and denotations of specific countries' ICH. In China, with the advancement of the interpretation and practice of the ICH discourse system, Sports ICH has been defined and delimited not only to encompass the common features of ICH but distinguished from other ICH categories by the features of physical movement behaviors and skills in the sports. In light of this background, and in combination with the global understanding of Sports ICH and the domestic academia's understanding of folk sports and traditional ethnic sports, the researchers performed a literature data analysis and a logical analysis and gave a localized definition of the Sports ICH concept in the Chinese context. The study came to the conclusion that Sports ICH in China, mainly Chinese traditional sports(including games), refers to the physical and behavioral techniques and skills which are of recreational, competitive and educational features, established during the process of playing folk sports and traditional ethnic sports of China and passed on from generation to generation, and that Sports ICH in China also refers to the craftsmanship in the making of various equipment and gear used and the cultural spaces(or spacial exhibition venues) used in connection with these techniques and skills. Intangibility and being alive are the most distinctive characteristics of Sports ICH.