Song Shuixian, a 50-year-old Shui ethnic woman from Sandu county, in Southwest China's Guizhou province, said she remembers her anxiety when she saw foreigners and visitors from other provinces buy horse tail embroidery in bulk 20 years ago.

The embroidery made of horse's tail hair is a delicate craft that has been passed on from generation to generation within the Shui ethnic group, which only has a population of 400,000. Song told a fleet of BMW visitors who visited last July that the craft was one of the most revered ancient arts in Guizhou and a "living fossil" in the world of embroidery.

Song said she was worried to see visitors buying up the embroidery masterpieces, as she was afraid that their purchases could eventually cause the losses of the precious cultural heritage.

"For more than 2,000 years it has been used to decorate straps for carrying babies and each Shui ethnic group girl needs a strap with the delicate embroidery for marriage," Song said.

She decided to collect ancient examples of the embroidery from every village in Sandu county and displayed them at home.

Today, her home is a family museum for the art and Song teaches local women the craft in a bid to preserve it as a cultural asset for China.

Wang Xingwu, a 19th generation inheritor of Shiqiao ancient paper making, also impressed the fleet members of the 2014 BMW China Culture Journey.

He lives in Shiqiao village, in Qiandongnan Miao and Dong autonomous prefecture, and shared the history of his craft with the BMW visitors.

"In our village senior citizens are still making the ancient paper, which is still based on techniques and tools from the ancient encyclopedia Tiangong Kaiwu, or The Exploitation of the Works of Nature, a book by Song Yingxing written in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)," he said.

A total of 18 processes are involved in the traditional paper making craft, including peeling, drying, soaking, dry pressing and baking tree bark.

"Each and every process reflects the wisdom of craftsmen over generations," Wang said.

Yang Zhengjiang also met the group of BMW visitors and told them about the heroic epic, King Yalu, which he said represented the ups and downs of the western Miao people, as well as their indomitable spirit.

"In some desolate and mountainous areas in Mashan, which borders six counties in Guizhou, there are a number of 'Dong Lang', or singing teachers or masters, who chant their ancestors' epic, King Yalu, day in and day out," he said.

Yang and his research team decided to record and translate the epic song, as even though it goes back thousands of years the plot and melody had never been written down and relied on local people to orally inherit it.

"For a minority that worships ancestors, it is their strong faith that gives us the enormous power to move forward," he said. The great epic interprets the early civilization of the Miao people and recalls the lost soul of an ancient history, Yang said.

These three stories were just some of those that members of the BMW China Culture Journey discovered.

The BMW China Culture Journey has been launched since 2007, traveled more than 17,000 kilometers and visted more than 210 items of intangible cultural assets in 21 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities. The program has donated 8 million yuan ($131,147) to 77 research topics and intangible cultural items for preservation and research.

BMW was honored by the China National Center for Safeguarding Intangible Culture Heritage under the Chinese Academy of National Arts, the nation's highest intangible asset preservation and research body, when it won an award for its contribution to protection and inheritance of China's non-material cultural assets in June 2014.

Thanks to its efforts advocating and protecting Chinese cultural elements, the company became the nation's first auto firm to win the award.

yangcheng@chinadaily.com.cn