Rural project uses photography to help preserve Qiang village heritage

Howard Ozawa was deeply impressed by the photographs of people and the rich culture of ethnic Chinese Qiang villages when recently visiting the Canon Qiang Minority Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Photograph Exhibition.

"All those people (in the photos) are energetic. I can truly feel their vitality from those photos and the connotations of Qiang culture," said Ozawa, the president and CEO of Canon China Co Ltd.

Ozawa said the Japanese camera and image solution company's equipment and technology helped create the "live" feeling of the photographs, and that Canon was proud to contribute to China's heritage protection efforts.

The exhibition Ozawa visited is on display at China's National Center for the Performing Arts as part of Canon's Qiang minority intangible cultural heritage protection initiative launched earlier this year.

The project is in cooperation with the Ministry of Culture and China Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center.

Beginning in May, an 18-member team of Canon staff members spent more than 60 days and walked 9,000-plus km to travel to 64 Qiang minority villages in 14 cities and counties of Sichuan, which was serious damaged by the May 2008 earthquake.

The Canon team visited ore than 130 Qiang culture experts and six Qiang culture centers, taking tens of thousands of photographs and 500-plu-GB video materials to record Qiang culture.

The digital databases the team created were donated to the China Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center for further study and protection of Qiang culture.

A series of 206 photographs from those databases now are on display, along with Qiang cultural relics such as Qiang embroidery, Qiang flutes and Qiang household wares.

Ozawa declined to specify Canon's total investment in the project, adding that the technology and human resources Canon devoted to the project could not be measured in money.

"We are exhilarated, as we have achieved such results and received recognition from experts and professionals," Ozawa said.

"We are encouraged to use our imaging technologies to do more for cultural protection," he said.

(China Daily 11/16/2009 page10)