Zhao Guangshun, male, was born at Chaping Yao Village, Tangdong Subdistrict of Zixing City in February 1951. 

 

He has devoted himself to studying and inheriting the Panwang Festival of the Yao ethnic group, a national intangible cultural heritage project. 

 

Zhao Guangshun was approved as a representative inheritor of the municipal intangible cultural heritage project in March 2014 and as a representative inheritor of intangible cultural heritage in Hunan Province in 2019.

 

Zhao Guangshun studied under Pan Gongxing, the representative inheritor of provincial-level intangible cultural heritage in Huilongshan Yao Township, Zixing City, and finished his apprenticeship in November 2006. 

 

Zhao Guangshun holds Yao cultural training classes during three traditional festivals of Qichun Festival, Reunion Festival, and Panwang Festival, as well as winter and summer holidays at the Chaping Yao Cultural Inheritance Center in Tangdong Subdistrict every year.

 

 

 

He gives lectures on sacrificial rituals and Yao culture, and teaches the skills of “redeeming a vow to the King of Pan”. At the same time, he taught 8 local apprentices including Zhao Shanzhen, Pan Anquan and Zhao Zhen. 

 

At the request of neighboring ethnic villages, Zhao Guangshun also taught more than 20 disciples in five Yao villages in Zixing City, Beihu District, and Yizhang County. 

 

He was often invited to host Yao cultural inheritance activities in Mangshan Yao Township of Yizhang County, Yuefeng Yao Township of Beihu District, Yanling County of Zhuzhou City, and other places, which received high praise.

 

Thanks to Zhao Guangshun’s persistence, the three traditional holiday activities for the Yao ethnic group are held every year. More than 30 training sessions on Yao songs, long drum dance and sacrificial rituals were held, with more than 300 cultural and artistic talents of the Yao ethnic group cultivated. 

 

While doing his work in teaching, inheritance and promotion, Zhao Guangshun spent more than four years compiling the endangered “Scripture on Panwang Festival of Yao People in Zixing City (I)”. The scripture consists of four volumes and over 200,000 words.

 

Now, this book has become a daily must-read scripture for Yao cultural inheritors, and it’s also the only textbook in Chenzhou City that fully records the activities of Panwang Festival for Yao people.

 

It has also promoted “Reunion Festival” of Yao people in Zixing City to be become an intangible cultural heritage project in Zixing City, the “Qichun Festival” to be a municipal intangible cultural heritage project in Chenzhou City. 

 

Panwang Festival was included in the first batch of representative intangible cultural heritage projects in Hunan Province in June 2006. 

 

In May 2021, it was selected into the fifth batch of national intangible cultural heritage representative projects (folk customs).

 

 

Chinese source: rednet