Study on the Features and the Actual Utilization of State-level Intangible Cultural Heritage of The Miao Ethnic Minority

In this paper I analyzed the features and the actual utilization of state-level intangible cultural heritage of the Miao ethnic minority. The outline of this paper is as follows: First, I abstracted all items related to the Miao people among state-level intangible cultural heritage lists announced by the Chinese government from 2006 to 2011. Consequentially, the Miao people had 55 state-level intangible cultural heritage, ranking third among 55 Chinese minorities, while the Miao’s population ranked fifth(2010). The Miao intangible cultural heritage represented the ratio of folk customs 23.6\%, traditional dance 18.2\%, folk literature 12.7\%, traditional crafts and skills 12.7\%, traditional music 10.9\% etc. I could find that multiethnic sharing items accounted for about 58.18\% of all the Miao intangible cultural heritage. This fact accidentally represented ‘plurality and unity in the Configuration of the Chinese Nation’.Second, today the Miao people live mainly in not only southwestern China but also Vietnan, Laos, United States, France etc. We might classify the Miao people as a transnational diaspora ethnic group. The Miao intangible cultural heritage were distributed into Guizhou 71.4\%, Hunan 17.6\%. We should especially pay attention to Guizhou Qiandongnan(黔東南自治州)Leishan(雷山縣). I think that the Miao intangible cultural heritage items could be classified into common heritage and branch tribe heritage. Arranging with the Miao three dialect districts, their intangible cultural heritage had the distribution ratio of east district(湘西) 24.2\%, central district(黔東) 57.1\%, and west district(川黔滇) 18.7\%. The Miao people had a strong sense of imagined community based on an ancestor of Chiyou(蚩尤), despite widespread population. I found many intangible cultural heritage items related to maintaining their identity and promoting their unity.Third, I investigated the actual utilization of the Miao intangible cultural heritage. I presented five representative cases: inheritors(傳承人) and traing \& inheriting institute(傳習所), application of elementary and middle school curriculum, ethnic culture customs park, ecomuseum and eco-cultural protection area, festival and exhibition. I’d like to indicate that the Miao intangible cultural heritage have been getting softer in seriousness, and more exhibiting, entertaining in nature in the course of using.