Explore, Experience, Exceed

Hello, everybody. I am Lu Wenqi from China. Today, I’d  like to tell you something about my experiences about heritage with you.

Well, my first exploration happened quite by accident.  At first, I attended a class to learn how to design paper clothes, those modern  or fashion clothes, like this. However, after a visit to a museum, my opinions  changed completely.

When I saw those porcelains in the museum, I just felt  that I couldn’t resist them. Their patterns, their shapes and the colors, all  attracted me. I thought it would be a pity if I hadn’t used them in my design.  So I started my plan on making a paper clothes combining porcelain patterns  with modern design.

Talking about my purpose of this project, firstly,  it’s to explore.

I wanted to know more about it myself and the more I  knew, the further I wanted to continue, so this event became what I was really  passionate about.

Then it’s the desire to improve it. Well, it doesn’t  refer to change the porcelain, but change the way people get contact with it.  Through clothes, porcelains were combined with modern design which enabled it  to be accepted by a lot more people. So after this acceptance, spreading it may  be much easier.

This two were my favorite designs and that’s what I’ve  put into real at last. The red one was inspired from porcelains like this,  while the blue one was from a famous kind of porcelain called Qinghua. Qinghua  has a history of over thousands of years and uses only blue and white colors.

So, they finally ended up like this. With many other  people performing with us, the show ended up successfully. It was also my pride  when a newspaper reported this event and took my model as its reporting photos.

Soon afterwards, more people were connected to this  kind of amazing heritage. After the show inside our school, we arranged a  competition between over 40 schools which enabled us to have more opportunities  to share opinions, as well as learning from each other. And without doubts, it  spread heritage as well.

Then as for me, this event was exactly the entrance to  my heritage road. It’s a nice experience to learn the porcelain’s beauty and  history. Also, it provided a desire for me to experience more in this field.

My passion grew as our school provides a nice  atmosphere for us. We have museums in the campus, filling with treasure, and  festivals to get us closer to Chinese tradition. Besides, as the Chinese world  heritage education centre for youth locates in our school, we host to organize  a heritage competition between different schools every year. And for me, it’s  totally a switching point.

I joined it this year as a volunteer with a wish of  learning something new from it. Well, as a volunteer, my job was to lead groups  of competitors from one place to another, which enables me to meet more people  and have a whole view of the event.

For example, this boy began to study kung fu since he  was a baby. All of his family members do it, but different types of it. And at  that time, he was standing there to promote it to people from various parts of  the world.

The girl was the president of the Opera Club in our  school, and she even wrote a script for Kunqu which enabled it to be put on  display in Opera House.

And there were many other people who made a map of  temples in Beijing by themselves or being tour guides at places of interest and  so on.

Inspiring by all of them, I realized that though I was  always saying that I loved it, I’ve never done anything of importance. So this  time I decided to do something on my own. I thought long and hard about if  there’s anything I could do to protect heritage. Luckily, one thing appeared in  my mind—the club of World Cultural Heritage.

I set up the club early this term. I’ve made posters  to attract more people. And we’ve even had a noon advertising it in the campus.  So, as a result, I’ve achieved in having about 20 new comers now. And we’ve  already worked out some future plans for the club. For example, we plan to make  a video to promote our club and heritage. Besides, I want to make a small  competition between classes which we hope will do good to their heritage  learning. Besides, I hope it can be an avenue to increase their passion.

In a word, it’s my exploration which gets me into the  heritage world while my experience made me want to exceed. And it’s all of  these allows me to standing here and address you with all my achievements.  According to my case, I hope we can find more ways to protect, or bring other  people to protect heritage. I truly believe that with every little step, we  will finally do something beyond our imagination. So let’s help each other to  make the world a more cultural place.

Thank you.