Center offers foreigners immersive cultural experiences

Dressed in traditional Chinese attire with his hair neatly combed back, Polish student Jan Jakub Zywczo sat in a traditional Beijing courtyard, carefully learning woodblock printing, a national-level representative item of China's intangible cultural heritage.

He was working on a reproduction of Peony, an artwork by renowned Chinese painter Qi Baishi (1863-1957). After a full day of instruction, Zywczo had become adept at the technique. Without waiting for his teacher to give him step-by-step instructions, he applied the pigments and transferred the image onto paper, gradually revealing the outline of a peony.

Zywczo is currently pursuing a doctoral degree at Beijing Language and Culture University. On Sept 4, the university organized a group of international students to learn traditional Chinese crafts at the Beijing Intangible Cultural Heritage Experience Center in Shajing Hutong in Beijing's Dongcheng district.

Opened to the public in 2024, the center occupies about 2,200 square meters and consists of four interconnected courtyards. The complex was once the residence of a Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) official and is now a municipal-level protected cultural heritage site.

As Beijing's first municipal-level public welfare center dedicated to intangible cultural heritage experiences, the venue has 15 exhibition halls and hands-on activity spaces. In addition to woodblock printing, visitors can try a range of traditional crafts, including cloisonne, carved lacquerware, and Beijing filigree and inlay techniques.

Zywczo speaks fluent Chinese and also works as a teaching assistant. For him, the most important part of learning is having fun.

He believes traditional culture offers an opportunity to apply language learning in concrete situations, adding that people can only truly understand a foreign language when they understand the culture behind it. "You can't learn Chinese if you don't understand the culture," Zywczo said.

Fulin Naz Yilmaz, a student from the Confucius Institute in Turkiye, was also immersed in the center's hands-on activities. She said making handicrafts at the venue was an enjoyable experience.

More importantly, she said, seeing a traditional work of art is about more than simply appreciating the finished piece. When teachers explained those cultural connections, "everything suddenly made sense," she added.

"Intangible cultural heritage is a very good way to tell China's stories," said Yang Fang, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism.

According to Yang, the center is actively working with inbound travel agencies to develop programs that allow foreigners to experience intangible cultural heritage during their trips to Beijing. Since beginning trial operations, the center has held more than 260 special events around major festivals and important dates, attracting more than 6,600 visitors.