Cao Shuzhen (left) and her brothers, Cao Zhixiong (center) and Cao Zhimeng, are making lanterns at their family workshop in Quanzhou, Fujian Province. Cao Shuzhen is a provincial-level master of this art form. [China Daily]

Rescue the market

Even so, the craft of lantern making doesn't provide for a decent life anymore, Li said. The factory exists in name only now, and the masters are out of work. Some pedal passenger tricycles to make a living, she said, "and some can't even afford the medical insurance".

Li's daughters - Li Chanjuan, who is 44 and a city-level Quanzhou-style lantern inheritor, and Huang Lifeng, 43 and a provincial-level inheritor - were laid off from the arts and crafts factory a decade ago, and are concerned about the sales channel for their family workshop.

Although the city's cultural bureau provides them opportunities to participate in exhibitions, they said, they gave up most of them because they couldn't afford the expense.

Last year, Huang went to Xiamen to take part in the cultural industry fair between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan. She received a subsidy of 100 yuan a day, but received no orders for lanterns.

"We don't get any benefit from the title, which brings only reporters' interviews and officials' visits, but no orders," said Cai Binghan, 82, the other State-level representative inheritor of the Quanzhou-style lantern, and the only master of the needle puncture lantern.

The protection of inheritors should be prioritized in the rescue of cultural heritage because the skills lie in people's hands, some experts say.

"The market has changed People no longer hang lanterns in high-rises as they did in one-story houses in the past," said Huang Jian, deputy dean of Quanzhou Normal University's art and design college. "So the government is responsible for motivating the industry, as it is hard for individuals to enter the mainstream culture with folk craft."

During a forum on the protection of traditional handicrafts held in Beijing in June, Deputy Culture Minister Wang Wenzhang put forward the philosophy of productive protection, meaning applying appropriate production to traditional crafts to foster their use and development.

Cai Binghan made two rose-style lanterns for his granddaughter's wedding ceremony and another one as a lampshade, but nobody promoted the products for him.

Huang Lifeng tried to develop her small lanterns as gifts, and she said many literary men were interested. But she couldn't afford the cost of packaging. "In this case, the government should act as a go-between for the masters and their clients to open up chances fore sales," Huang said.

One member of the National Experts Committee for Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection said the heritage list was decided quickly and included many items (1,002 on the three lists in the past six years), but subsequent measures were lacking.

In Quanzhou Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center, the two employees who carry out everyday work are post-retirement workers. Nobody has been hired who is trained in protecting heritage or who might make it a career.

"The key to protection is not a list and titles, but concrete measures to help different items and the masters," said Hang Jian, 49, the experts committee member and deputy dean of Tsinghua University's academy of art and design.

"Productive protection can't save every skill, like the lantern, which requires a long time of handwork and is based on festive culture," he said. "To look at the prospects of the craft, the government should figure out specific ways to promote new uses of the traditional craft in the modern time."