Zhang used the Dragon Boat Festival as a prime example. The appraisal committee voted for it when they had to choose between it and the Spring Festival as one representative of Chinese folk traditions.

Committee members believed the Spring Festival is "irresistible" and "more likely to survive on its own" as the Chinese people worldwide still honor this tradition while the other is on the verge of "oblivion," Zhang said.

The selection also functions as a response to the successful nomination of South Korea's Gangneung Dano Festival four years ago, proliferating concerns that China, where the holiday originated, should protect its own customs.

Raising awareness

Successfully listing the cultural elements will make them known to a wider global audience while promoting their influence, but whether it will help improve the effectiveness of rational protection will depend on each country or region.

Applicants in China have put considerable effort into raising public awareness to the importance of ICH protection.

The traditional firing technology of Longquan celadon

"When China first submitted an application to UNESCO for world recognition of the Kunqu opera in 2001, this ancient, mature and even perfect genre of opera was old enough and had only six to seven troupes nationwide," said Yu Xingyi, Deputy Director of the Bureau of External Cultural Relations under the Ministry of Culture. "During that time, many in China didn't know what ICH was."

In retrospect, Ma Wenhui, Director of Intangible Cultural Heritage Department of the Ministry of Culture, said China's understanding of ICH's importance has deepened in the past four years. At first, the purpose of such applications was to rediscover the value of Chinese traditional culture, but the focus quickly changed to sharing China's cultural heritage with the rest of the world, Ma said.

Unlike patent licenses that provide individuals with exclusive rights, nominations on either the Representative List or the Urgent Safeguarding List doesn't preclude other countries from applying, or jointly applying, for the same items, because even the same item could bear "different cultural connotations and customs," Yu said.

Already, efforts have paid off as a substantial following of supporters has emerged from the various levels of local governments.

Initiated in 2005, the national ICH protection project now covers 1,028 state-level items, including 186 folk crafts that need inheritors to pass them down from generation to generation. It also involves 1,488 representative inheritors and offers protection to 2,110 registered units.

More than 900 museums, folk arts museums and institutes were set up, and the Ministry of Culture has established four cultural landscape protection pilot projects for four distinct regional cultures and traditions. While the Central Government is considering a national law on ICH protection, the local governments of Yunnan, Guizhou, Fujian, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, and some autonomous regions, have already introduced their own ICH protection provisions.

According to Ma, one of the ministry's top priorities this year is to organize experts to work out reasonable protection plans and detailed measures for pilot protection projects, and to promote and supervise the implementation of these measures.

By the end of 2008, the Ministry of Culture had injected 236 million yuan ($34.55 million) into related cultural heritage protection projects.

Still, some analysts expressed their concerns about the ballooning number, wondering if follow-up protection measures can catch up with the pace.

"South Korea has until now identified only 113 national ICH items while China has 1,028, but unlike China, whose ICH protection efforts began only recently, South Korea and Japan began the work in the 1950s and 60s," said Feng Jicai, Chairman of the Chinese Folk Literature and Arts Society.

Fighting to survive

The craftsmanship of Nanjing Yunjin brocade

The protection aims for a self-evolving and self-sufficient mechanism for ICH items to survive, said Qiu Guoliang, Director of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center of Zhejiang Province.

As productive protection is widely considered the best way for ICHs to survive the changing tastes of modern society, the Central Government began to subsidize individual each representative inheritors with 8,000 yuan ($1,171) in 2008. Local governments also allocated funds to sponsor such activities and help with venue selection.