Between representation and performance: celebrating intangible cultural heritage in the Longji Ancient Zhuang Village, Longji Terraces, China1

Intangible cultural heritage (ICH) serves as a powerful tool for representing cultural diversity and fostering local development in China. The state-led administrative system of ICH conveys the shift from immaterial cultural manifestations to an essential resource for cultural production and national identity construction in ethnic minority areas. Heritage tourism brings about ICH-making occurring at the national, regional and local levels, contributing to the creation of official heritage discourses. However, for ethnic minority communities, ICH is part of their everyday lives, even though it might not be recognised, staged and celebrated as an authorised ICH. Contextualised within the dimension of performance, ICH is also related to emotion and experience. Thus, this paper investigates the representation and performance of ICH within and beyond official heritage discourse, by drawing on the Longji Ancient Zhuang Village in China as a case study. It argues that ICH-making that community members participate in or control is not only for cultural representation and tourism consumption but also a means for self-expression and engaging a sense of place.