Is carefully depicted to reflect age, class status, and/or a clearly defined role in the

procession, making visible the well-ordered social hierarchy that supports the

magistrate’s position. As he appears before the spring deities to make sacrificial

offerings, the ceremony also associates the magistrate’s power with a divine mandate.

A similar message is narrated in the Nianhua Festival, where real officials replace

the role of the county magistrate seen in the painting. While the painting depicts the

magistrate in a tent or before an altar, the focal point of the Nianhua Festival is a large

stage for state officials and community leaders to greet the crowd (fig. 80). This stage is

used as a platform for various state officials to give speeches, and to announce the

festival’s goals “to develop the resources of traditional folk culture, to strengthen the

cultural industries, to expand cultural exchange and collaboration, and to raise Mianzhu’s

profile.” 327 While the performances recreate scenes from Greeting Spring to celebrate

local history, the insertion of real officials in the place of the magistrate’s figure situates

the historic festival in a contemporary context. In contrast to the performers in historical

costume, the officials perform their own positions of power as “real” leaders. As state

327 Wang, "A Record of Mianzhu's Nianhua Festival," 209.

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officials ascend the stage to oversee hundreds of performers enacting auspicious street

theater, the festival celebrates the state’s command over a vast array of human and

cultural resources.328 This image has also been played up in the news coverage of the

event, where the Nianhua Festival has been lauded as a sign of economic prosperity due

to effective state leadership in the cultural domain.

According to Billioud and Thoroval, public heritage festivals across China have

advanced a new form of statecraft, where Confucian ideals are used to construct a

“national cultural narrative” and coherent national cultural identity as part of China’s

“soft power” strategies at home and abroad. The authors observe how during the 1980s,

the interest in Confucism was largely limited to tourism and academic endeavors, while

the 1990s and 2000s brought about greater focus on its political and symbolical

dimensions that promote the morally upright and benevolent character of the state. The

“holy city” of Qufu, Shandong, where Confucius was born and buried, has since been

transformed into a “symbolic city of Chinese culture.” An estimated thirty billion yuan

has been invested to build up Qufu’s heritage sites and museums, and to hold the annual

Confucius Culture Festival 􀥤􁈰􀻓􀟄􀢫. However, the appropriated Confucian messages

of harmony and openness contradict the “rigid bureaucratic procedures” that were

employed to manufacture consensus for these heritage activities.329

The unfolding trends in Mianzhu mirror the developments in Qufu as the state-led

nianhua revival increases its use of nianhua for ideological statecraft. As a nationally

recognized form of ICH, nianhua moves into different realms of political and economic

activity, from exported folk art to heritage tourism to staged culture festivals. Although

328 Such practices gained momentum and reached a height with the extravagant heritage performances

produced for the Olympics Games held in Beijing in 2008.

329 Billioud and Thoraval, "Lijiao: The Return of Ceremonies," 99.

219

UNESCO’s ICH guidelines specifically advocated for the “widest possible participation”

of community members and their active involvement in heritage management decisions,

the Nianhua Village and Nianhua Festival does little to address these issues. The state-led

efforts to embrace ICH continue to be exclusive and selective activities that are geared

toward promoting certain works in the state nianhua collection. The contradictions

between rhetoric and practice reveals how international agencies such as UNESCO

inadvertently catalyze and legitimize the very activities they seek to oppose.