As the Dragon Boat Festival arrives with the gentle breeze of early summer, traditional Chinese Dragon Boat Festival blooms with unique vitality. To inherit and promote China’s fine traditional culture, facilitate international cultural exchanges, and help overseas students deeply perceive the profound connotations and humanistic charm of Chinese traditional festivals, SIE organized 50 international students to visit Dalian Museum on the afternoon of June 12. The cultural second classroom activity offered an immersive intangible cultural heritage (ICH) experience for foreign students from all over the world.
Centering on the rich cultural heritage of the Dragon Boat Festival, the activity featured two classic ICH handicraft experiences: traditional bamboo-weaving fan making and mugwort knot ornament weaving. Integrating cultural knowledge, hands-on creation and heritage inheritance, the well-structured and innovative activity broke cultural and language barriers with professional on-site guidance from museum instructors. With targeted and patient teaching, international students successfully engaged themselves in authentic Chinese folk culture and felt the glamour of traditional festival customs up close.
The activity kicked off with a professional thematic explanation. The museum guide systematically introduced the origin, traditional folk customs and blessing culture of the Dragon Boat Festival. Combined with the activity theme, the instructor elaborated on the craftsmanship of bamboo weaving—a national-level intangible cultural heritage that embodies the Chinese spirit of ingenuity, preciseness and perseverance. The traditional custom of hanging mugwort during the Dragon Boat Festival was also interpreted, conveying the ancient Chinese people’s sincere wishes for health, peace and good fortune. The detailed introduction helped international students establish a clear connection between traditional festivals and intangible cultural heritage, laying a solid cultural foundation for the subsequent hands-on practice.
The on-site handicraft practice session was lively and harmonious. In the bamboo-weaving fan experience, instructors demonstrated the complete production process step by step, including sorting bamboo strips, interweaving warp and weft, shaping, edge trimming and tassel decoration. Starting from scratch, the international students observed carefully, practiced repeatedly and polished their works patiently. Gradually, simple slender bamboo strips were woven into delicate and elegant handcrafted fans. Through full hands-on participation, every student personally experienced the subtlety of traditional bamboo weaving and appreciated the extraordinary ingenuity of Chinese traditional handicrafts.
The subsequent mugwort knot weaving activity was rich in cultural implications. Students learned to make Wanzi knots, a traditional Chinese knot symbolizing unity, smoothness and auspiciousness. Combining the festival custom of hanging mugwort for blessings, students matched fresh mugwort with diverse decorative accessories freely. Giving full play to their creativity, they crafted unique and exquisite ornaments that perfectly presented the charm of traditional folk customs. In the process of weaving every knot and thread, international students deeply felt the profound depth of Chinese traditional culture. Meanwhile, students from different countries communicated with each other, shared experience and helped one another, building a warm atmosphere of cultural mutual learning and bridging cross-cultural gaps.
The exquisite ICH handicrafts made by students themselves have become precious souvenirs, recording their unique Dragon Boat Festival memories at DUT. Many international students spoke highly of the immersive second classroom activity. They noted that the activity not only helped them systematically learn the historical origins and folk meanings of the Dragon Boat Festival, but also allowed them to experience the unique glamour of Chinese intangible cultural heritage in person, enabling them to understand and recognize China’s fine traditional culture in a more comprehensive and in-depth way.
Rooted in traditional festival culture and focused on ICH inheritance, this museum-based cultural experience activity built an immersive cultural learning platform for international students, effectively enhancing their sense of identity with Chinese culture and enriching their campus cultural life. Moving forward, the School of International Education will continue to improve its traditional culture education system, fully leverage high-quality cultural resources including traditional festivals and museums, and launch more diverse, immersive cultural exchange activities. The school will keep telling authentic Chinese stories, promoting the inheritance and dissemination of fine traditional Chinese culture, and facilitating cross-cultural mutual learning and all-round growth of international youth.
