On the morning of August 10, 2026, the Asia-Pacific Capacity-Building Workshop on “Synergy Between Tangible and Intangible Heritage in World Heritage Management” officially opened in Anxi County, Quanzhou City, Fujian Province. The workshop was jointly organized by the UNESCO World Heritage Training and Research Center for the Asia-Pacific Region (WHITR-AP Beijing), the Chinese National Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS China), the School of Archaeology and Museology at Peking University, and the Quanzhou Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Television, and Tourism; It was organized by the Anxi County People’s Government and the Anxi Teaching and Research Base of Peking University’s School of Archaeology and Museology; co-organized by the Quanzhou Cultural Relics Protection Center and the Quanzhou Cultural Heritage Research Institute; and guided by the UNESCO East Asia Regional Office and the Fujian Provincial Bureau of Cultural Relics. The workshop invited 19 participants from six countries—Malaysia, Tanzania, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Tajikistan, and China—and also invited senior heritage scholars from China, Singapore, Vietnam, Australia, Nepal, and other countries to deliver lectures, with the aim of facilitating the exchange of cross-regional and multi-faceted heritage conservation experiences.
In the more than fifty years since the adoption of the World Heritage Convention, global heritage conservation has gradually shifted toward a comprehensive, people-centered approach. Documents such as the 2024 ICOMOS International Charter and Guidelines on Intangible Cultural Heritage Sites have consistently called for equal attention to both the tangible forms of heritage and the living traditions that sustain it. However, in practice, issues such as “disjointed management” between tangible and intangible heritage persist. Against this backdrop, Building on Anxi County’s rich material and intangible heritage resources, this workshop brings together experts and practitioners in the field of heritage from multiple countries. It aims to explore practical solutions to the challenges of coordinating the protection of material and intangible heritage in global heritage management and to establish an international exchange platform for heritage conservation in the Asia-Pacific region.
Opening Ceremony Group Photo
The workshop’s opening ceremony was held in the Multipurpose Hall on the second floor of the Anxi Yonglong International Hotel, Song Xinchao, Chair of ICOMOS China; Duong Bich Hanh, Cultural Program Officer at the UNESCO East Asia Regional Office; Fu Qisheng, Deputy Director-General of the Fujian Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism and Director of the Fujian Provincial Bureau of Cultural Relics; Chen Qingyong, Deputy Secretary of the Anxi County CPC Committee and Acting County Governor of Anxi County; and Shen Ruiwen, Dean of the School of Archaeology and Museology at Peking University and Director of WHITR-AP Beijing, attended the opening ceremony and delivered remarks. Lyu Xiujia, Party Secretary and Director of the Quanzhou Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Television, and Tourism; Kristal Buckley, World Heritage Advisor for the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and Professor Emeritus at Deakin University in Australia; Neel Kamal Chapagain, Director of the International Interdisciplinary Heritage Research Center and Professor of Architecture at the University of Kathmandu in Nepal; Anna Yau, Vice President for External Affairs of the Hong Kong Institute of Architectural Conservation and Member of the ICOMOS Intangible Cultural Heritage Committee; and Sun Jing, Associate Professor at the Quanzhou Cultural Heritage Research Institute, attended the opening ceremony. Li Kuanghan, Executive Director of WHITR-AP Beijing, presided over the opening ceremony.
Li Kuanghan hosts the opening ceremony.
At the start of the opening ceremony, Chen Qingyong, Deputy Secretary of the Anxi County Committee of the Communist Party of China and Acting County Governor of the Anxi County People’s Government, extended a warm welcome to guests from home and abroad on behalf of the Anxi County Party Committee and County Government. He noted that Anxi boasts the rich resources of “Three Railways and Three World Heritage Sites,” with a wealth of cultural relics and intangible cultural heritage throughout the county. He emphasized that Quanzhou places great importance on the revitalization and transmission of heritage, and that Anxi continues to advance the integrated protection of tangible and living heritage. Hosting this international workshop in the “Tea Capital” serves as a window for Anxi to engage with cutting-edge international heritage concepts and showcase its local culture. Anxi County will use this event as an opportunity to draw on advanced global conservation practices, integrate them into local heritage management and cultural tourism development, and continue to effectively tell the story of the Tea Capital’s cultural heritage.
Chen Qingyong delivers remarks.
Shen Ruiwen, Dean of the School of Archaeology and Museology at Peking University and Director of WHITR-AP Beijing, extended a warm welcome to the experts and participants attending the workshop. He noted that the center has been implementing the Asia-Pacific Heritage Capacity-Building Workshop for three consecutive years, having trained more than 50 heritage professionals from various countries to date. Peking University has deep ties with Anxi County. It has long been engaged in archaeological work at the Xiacaopu Iron Smelting Site, jointly established a teaching base, and explored the “Anxi Model,” which integrates archaeology, conservation, and community benefits. Anxi’s unique conditions—featuring the coexistence of three World Heritage sites—provide an excellent practical classroom for this collaborative thematic workshop. He expressed his hope that participants from various countries would engage in thorough exchanges based on Anxi’s field cases and bring comprehensive conservation experiences back to their home heritage sites.
Shen Ruiwen delivers remarks.
Song Xinchao, representing ICOMOS China, offered congratulations on the opening of the workshop. He noted that the collaborative protection of tangible and intangible heritage is a key issue currently receiving attention in the international heritage community. Over the years, the association has promoted the revision of domestic guidelines and organized academic seminars on living heritage, thereby deepening understanding of the collaborative protection of tangible and intangible heritage. Given the rich heritage resources of Quanzhou City and Anxi County, he expressed hope that this workshop would facilitate exchange and mutual learning among participants from various countries, contributing unique experiences and insights to the future collaborative protection of tangible and intangible cultural heritage at both the regional and global levels.
Song Xinchao delivers remarks.
Fu Qisheng, Deputy Director of the Fujian Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism and Director of the Fujian Provincial Bureau of Cultural Relics, extended a warm welcome and congratulations to experts and participants from home and abroad on behalf of the Fujian cultural heritage system. Fu Qisheng noted that the Asia-Pacific Heritage Workshop Series has been held in Quanzhou for three consecutive years, having trained more than 50 international practitioners to date; he had also participated in previous editions of the event in Quanzhou last year. Drawing on his dual role overseeing both tangible and intangible cultural heritage, he highlighted Fujian’s abundant heritage resources, including five World Heritage sites and 10 items of World Intangible Cultural Heritage, with Anxi County boasting the unique advantage of its “Three Railways and Three World Heritage Sites.” Centering on the theme of “Synergy Between Tangible and Intangible Cultural Heritage,” he put forward three expectations: to achieve both form and spirit in advancing the systematic and integrated protection of heritage; to foster connections between the past and the present, enhancing integrated development to enrich people’s lives; and to deepen both internal and external efforts by conducting transnational and cross-disciplinary collaborative research. Finally, he expressed his best wishes for the workshop’s success and cordially invited friends from all walks of life to visit the blessed land of Fujian to savor its local delicacies and to frequently visit the tea-growing region of Anxi to enjoy the aroma of tea.
Fu Qisheng delivers remarks.
Duong Bich Hanh, Program Specialist and Chief of Culture Unit at the UNESCO East Asia Regional Office, expressed sincere gratitude on behalf of the office to the organizers, partner institutions, and local governments for facilitating this event. She noted that Anxi, home to a World Cultural Heritage site, an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, and a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System, offers a unique setting where tangible heritage is deeply intertwined with tea-drinking customs and traditional crafts, making it an ideal venue for exploring the collaborative protection of these two types of heritage. Duong Bich Hanh pointed out that a global consensus has emerged on holistic, people-centered heritage conservation. The core issue today is to overcome the challenge of the separate management of these two types of heritage: while the management of tangible heritage focuses on the physical entities themselves, the protection of intangible cultural heritage centers on living traditions. A single system alone cannot fully safeguard the cultural continuum. She expressed her hope that participants would draw upon lectures, field trips, and group collaboration to transform the concept of collaborative conservation into actionable plans, and to fully exchange ideas, learn from one another, and generate practical conservation strategies.
Duong Bich Hanh delivers remarks.
Following the opening ceremony, Song Xinchao delivered a keynote speech titled “ICOMOS China and the Preservation of Living Heritage.” By reviewing the diverse definitions of living heritage provided by international heritage organizations—including UNESCO, ICOMOS, and ICCROM—he emphasized that living heritage is centered on continuity; it is an organic system closely intertwined with community life and continuously transmitted, yet currently faces multiple risks such as commercial misinterpretation, the impact of disasters and conflicts, and issues related to values. He systematically introduced the rich diversity of China’s living heritage and the essence of its living attributes, covering diverse forms such as historic towns and villages, agricultural heritage, water conservancy heritage, ritual temples, and cultural landscapes. He proposed that the continuity of living heritage should adhere to holistic and systematic conservation and sustainable transmission, thereby contributing Chinese experience and wisdom to global cultural heritage conservation.
Song Xinchao delivers keynote speech.
Lyu Xiujia delivered a keynote speech titled “Empowering a Better Life by World Heritage.” Drawing on Quanzhou’s experience in comprehensive heritage management, she highlighted that Quanzhou boasts two international accolades—as a World Heritage Site and a World Capital of Gastronomy—and possesses rich tangible heritage and a comprehensive intangible cultural heritage system. Since successfully securing World Heritage status, Quanzhou has leveraged the revitalization of its heritage to drive sustained growth in cultural tourism traffic and revenue, while folk customs such as the “Zanhua” hairpin ceremony have gained international recognition. She shared three key dimensions of heritage development: nurturing the hearts of the people through culture, revitalizing traditions through inheritance, and empowering the city through cultural tourism, thereby providing a Quanzhou model for the coordinated development of tangible and intangible heritage.
Lyu Xiujia delivers keynote speech.
Duong Bich Hanh, Program Specialist and Chief of Culture Unit at the UNESCO East Asia Regional Office, closely aligned with the workshop’s theme and shared UNESCO’s latest research progress on the topic in a presentation titled “Synergy Between Tangible and Intangible Heritage: Opportunities, Challenges, and the Future.” Relying on the FUSE (Framework for United Stewardship and Enhancement) coordination framework, the UNESCO East Asia Regional Office collaborated with several UNESCO Category 2 centers in the Asia-Pacific region—including WHITR-AP Beijing—to conduct specialized research across five countries in the East Asia region. The report compared the core differences between the 1972 World Heritage Convention and the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, pointing out that the differing evaluation criteria and management logics of the two systems have led to widespread issues in heritage governance across countries, such as conceptual misuse and fragmented management. After the research team reviewed heritage policies from China, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, and Mongolia, as well as 78 World Heritage management plans and 82 intangible cultural heritage protection plans, they established a five-level integrated assessment framework. They found that most plans only superficially mentioned the connection between the two types of heritage and lacked practical coordination mechanisms; countries generally face common challenges such as the separation of departmental responsibilities, the fragmentation of dedicated funding, community participation limited to an advisory role, and a disconnect between physical spaces and living traditions. The project collected 28 typical integration case studies from East Asia, identifying diverse pathways for collaboration—such as the transmission of skills, revitalization through culture and tourism, and digital empowerment—and summarizing key success factors including governance innovation, community leadership, and university-industry collaboration. It also examined the current state of interdisciplinary heritage education at East Asian universities, highlighting teaching shortcomings such as disciplinary barriers and insufficient resources. Finally, the project proposes five key action areas for implementation, advocating for the establishment of an integrated management and conservation system that unites “people, places, and practices,” and promoting a shift from the simple superimposition of these two types of heritage to a model of in-depth collaborative governance.
Duong Bich Hanh delivers keynote speech.
With the strong support of the Quanzhou Cultural Relics Protection Research Center and the Anxi County People’s Government, WHITR-AP Beijing and ICOMOS China, building on the experience of the 2025 Asia-Pacific Heritage Workshop Series, are organizing this training session in Anxi. This seven-day workshop will employ a diverse range of formats—including keynote speeches, specialized lectures, group discussions, field surveys at three sites, and collaborative workshops—to guide participants in moving beyond theoretical frameworks. It is hoped that participants will develop actionable, practical plans for the coordinated management of tangible and intangible heritage at both the national and local levels.
Select experts and participants from the opening ceremony.
