Beijing's breeding ground for culture

Qianmen will take on a new look, with the construction of a 400,000-square-meter park, with an investment of about 24 billion yuan ($3.9 billion).

Li says he's confident the investment will turn profits. The park will become an incubator for ICH inheritors' small businesses. The cultural-industry hub will also host auctions, expositions and trade fairs, and draw tourists.

"Publicizing folk-art techniques isn't enough to preserve tradition," Li says. "We must put ICH into the DNA of everyday life."

The e-commerce site Efiyi.com was launched last week to help the new park involve more such inheritors. It'll not only serve domestic successors but later also establish a database for overseas peers.

But the Qianmen area is meant to be the headquarters for an international network of comparable parks.

Yongxin Huayun plans to build 15 to 20 affiliates over the next decade. Branches will open in France and Los Angeles. Domestic candidates include Shandong province's Qingdao, Jiangsu province's Suzhou and Hainan province's Sanya.

China has inscribed nearly 870,000 ICH items from county to national levels since the list was established in 2006, China Art Research Institute director Wang Wenzhang says.

A government-led preservation model has steered the past decade's efforts.

"(But) master craftsmanship and spirit is at the protection's core," he told the Beijing forum.