Approaching Heilongjiang Province —— Cultural Heritages

Heilongjiang Province is a multi-ethnic region, as well as an immigrant frontier province. Han people made up more than 90 percent of the province’s total population. Small as the population size is, the ethnic minorities have a variety of races, including ten major generational living ethnic minorities: Manchu, Hui, Korean, Mongolian, Daur, Oroqen, Ewenki, Kirgiz, Hezhe and Sibo. Mostly, the historical changes and folk customs of these generational living nationalities are supported by ethnic concentrated communities. Manchu, Mongolian, Oroqen, Ewenki, Daur and some other ethnic minorities are abundant in myths of inheritance. During a long time, lengthy heroic epics have been circulating by dialect rap among Hezhe, Oroqen, and Daur, such as Yimakan of Heze, Mosukun of Oroqen and Wuqin of Daur.

Since modern times, Heilongjiang, as a big multi-ethnic frontier province, has gradually formed frontier and ethnic characteristics of civilization blending with western cultures. These cultural characteristics are produced by refugees appearing since the early Qing Dynasty and migrants from the inside Shanhaiguan Pass after the Qing rulers lifted the ban on “the place of Dragon Appearance”. They have brought excellent Chinese national tradition and folk customs of inside Shanhaiguan Pass, integrating with indigenous cultures in Heilongjiang. In the early 20th century, Heilongjiang, especially the ports of Harbin, Heihe and Suifenhe, has become an international business center, thus has exchanges and integration on fields of architecture, religion, culture, education, hygiene, etc with many Eastern and Western countries, such as Russia, Japan, Germany, Netherlands and France. Civilizations of different countries and of different nations impact and communicate with Heilongjiang regional culture, forming an integral part of modern civilization of Heilongjiang River valley.

Heilongjiang Province is enriched with plentiful resources of non-material cultural heritages. Some of them have become productive branches of literature and art which have produced a great number of brilliant works. Some others have numbered among tourism culture industries, reaping significant social an economic benefits. The provincial government of Heilongjiang Pro promulgated the first 57 directories of provincial non-material cultural heritages on March 27th, 2007, nine of which are national non-material cultural heritages and are marked with★.