Using innovation to save culture

Digital recordings and updating performances for the modern age are some of the ways that are being used to keep dying art forms like Huagu Opera and xianziqiang from southern Shaanxi alive.

Wang Helin, a city-level expert in Huagu Opera and xianziqiang, a traditional opera form from Pingli county in Ankang, Northwest China's Shaanxi province, feels ashamed for remembering only a dozen of operas from both the forms now.

A member of Pingli Opera Troupe, Wang, who is now in his 70s, performed the opera forms-both designated as intangible cultural heritage-for decades before audiences had become scarce. And he had to give up the art and worked as a purchaser in the local bureau of materials and equipment. Luckily, he was appointed an "inheritor" of the art forms and continued his career in opera after retirement.