The “Living State” Research of China Non-material Cultural Heritage on Digital Age

Abstract

Intangible cultural heritage is considered as the basic identification mark of the nation for many nationalities. With the changes of the times and the development of science and technology, intangible cultural heritage programs of the traditional art and skill types with technique as the core have faded out of people’s lives even gradually demised because of the changes of social demand, the lacking of inheritors and inadequate protection. So how to protect and inherit the intangible cultural heritage and how to provide a driving force for its survival and development by design innovation under modern conditions?

Nanjing Jinling Sutra Printing House, established in the fifth year of the Tongzhi Period (1866) and engaging in the gathering, collection, research and publishing of sutra, it has collected lots of precious sutra and statue engravings. Till now, the Printing House has collected 125,318 pieces of Buddhist classical engravings, completely protected and inherited traditional woodblock printing skill of China originated from over 1,300 years ago and formed a unique artistic style of books. The “Chinese woodblock printing technique”, represented by Nanjing Jinling Sutra Printing House, etc., was inscribed on the World Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by the UNESCO in 2009. Its book art has profoundly embodied the art symbol of traditional Chinese culture in the aspects of text and image, layout and binding, material and technology, etc., with unique aesthetic features of ancient Chinese art. Its master-to-apprentice mechanism of book art is even one of the representative methods and approaches of Chinese cultural and artistic inheritance.

The woodblock printing of Jinling Sutra Printing House includes four manual procedures of sample writing, engraving, painting and binding. Wherein, writing and engraving have a high request on professional skills of the operators, which need a long-term training and cultivating mechanism of apprentice learning from master and oral teaching that inspires true understanding within. The aesthetic value embodied by manual engraving is the precious aspect of artistic style of books but also a shortage for the passing on of the woodblock printing art. For instance, the difficulty in cultivating professional talents, the accurate requests on one-time molding of engraving skills, the labor and time-consuming in product output efficiency, increasing space requirements on storage of woodblocks, technical requirements on long-term preservation of woodblocks (anti-damping, anti-moth, fire proofing) etc. Besides, there are only four masters and apprentices of three generations in Jinling Sutra Printing House at present, and two of whom are the only apprentices of their masters, talent training and technology inheritance are confronted with a great risk of uncertainty. Although woodblock printing plays an important role in the development and inheritance of China’s traditional culture and artistry, it still has equally prominent technical limitations. Therefore, how to conduct effective and living research on such intangible cultural heritage and use digital technology for its comprehensive protection and inheritance in the digital times has become a particularly necessary proposition.

After preliminary research, the writer believes that the current protection and inheritance for intangible cultural heritage programs have the following patterns: first of all, inheriting the project originally; secondly, on the basis of original inheritance, thinking about how to combine the traditional skills with modern life, and how to integrate the intangible cultural heritage with times elements in innovative approaches, so that it can be inherited lively. The writer believes that, nowadays, living state is an important characteristic of China’s intangible cultural heritage. So, the development of contemporary intangible cultural heritage shall be effectively put into the market as a circulation commodity with higher added value and cultural value and interact and promote with the market to become a driving power and motive power for the development of social culture.

1 Introduction

Intangible cultural heritage is considered as the basic identification mark of the nation for many nationalities. With the changes of the times and the development of science and technology, traditional intangible cultural heritage programs of the art and skill types have faded out of people’s lives even gradually demised because of the changes of social demand, the lacking of inheritors and inadequate protection. It is the original intention of this subject to protect and inherit the intangible cultural heritage, seek the motive power for innovation, provide a driving force for its survival and development with design innovation so that it can be integrated into modern living methods and realize diverse cultural innovation methods, construct a sustainable development ecological system of “inheritor – intangible culture - environment”, and embody more cultural value, social value and economic value in this digital era.

2 Jinling Sutra Printing House and Jinling Sutra Printing Technique

2.1 Jinling Sutra Printing House

As one of the “Four Great Inventions” in human history, “woodblock printing technique” is called “living fossil” in the printing history. It has played a great role in the civilization process of China, even the world. The woodblock printing technique of Jinling Sutra Printing House is the continuation of this ancient craft. As the engraving, printing, publishing and circulating center for Chinese woodblock Buddhist sutras in modern China, Jinling Sutra Printing House has won a great reputation at home and abroad since its foundation in 1866 by the Lay Buddhist YANG Renshan. The sutras engraved and published by the Sutra Printing House are famous for its accurately and strictly selected works, pure contents, prudent emendation, the good-looking large characters and exquisite paper stock. In 2009, the “Chinese Woodblock Printing Technique” inherited by Jinling Sutra Printing House, Yangzhou Guangling Ancient Book Printing Press and Sichuan Dege Sutra Printing Institute is inscribed on the List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity of the UNESCO simultaneously.

Nanjing Jinling Sutra Printing House is the first privately-founded sutra publishing institute in modern times, which has integrated the functions of sutra collecting, engraving, printing, circulating and Buddhist study. It is not only the first sutra printing house founded in the late Qing Dynasty, but also the only sutra printing house existed in China. It not only completely preserves the ancient woodblock water print technique, but also collects large number of valuable Buddhist sutra blocks, such as 1,600 pieces of blocks for Huayan Sutra engraved in the 43rd–59th year of the Kangxi Period in the Qing Dynasty (1704–1720), which is an important physical materials for researching the status of sutra engraving in the southern Jiangsu in the early Qing Dynasty.

2.2 Jinling Woodblock Sutra Printing Technique

Jinling Woodblock Sutra Printing Skill is composed of three basic contents, such as cutting blocks, printing and binding (Fig. 1). There are over 20 procedures from writing sutra to engraving, including loading sample, engraving characters, brushing ink, scraping printing, paging, folding, aligning, classification, penetrating spill, line folding, etc.

Fig. 1.

Basic Contents of Jinling Woodblock Sutra Printing Skill

Block cutting can be divided into three steps, including “writing sample”, “loading sample” and “engraving”. Wherein, Song typeface is adopted for “writing sample”, which was taught by personal example as well as verbal instruction from master to apprentice and remembered with mind. There are six writing pithy formulas on writing sample, that is, “the horizontal stroke should be even, the vertical stroke should be straight, the dot should look like a melon seed, the left-falling stroke should look like a knife, the turning stroke should look like a Chinese Honey locust Spine and the right-falling stroke should look like a shovel”. The powered ink used for writing samples is made from ash of burnt pine tree, flour, glue and vinegar. After the characters are written, selected Tangli wood (Tangli wood of Anhui is the best) will be cut into several sections and fire-cured in water for one day so as to remove the sugar in the wood and preventing damage by worms, and then being dried and trimmed. Soak the wood block with water and then cover it with paper. When the paper is half-dried, slightly rub the paper with fingers, the black ink characters will be shown on the wood blocks. This procedure is called “sample loading”. The last procedure is “engraving”. Character engraving is an important technical procedure in the whole printing process as well as a unique skill of Jinling Sutras Office. It has profound cultural and technical connotation. The engraver will firstly brush the wood block with a layer of vegetable oil, which will loose the wood and make it easy to engrave. The amount of oil usually depends on the experience of the engraver. Then the left and right sides of the characters will be engraved, and the pithy formula for that is “deep for left side and fast for right side”.

Manual printing is adopted, which can be divided as flying print and pressing print (a small part is printed with machine). The printing by Jinling Sutras Office focuses on “application of ink should be even, with four angles being printed, and the fold line shall be black.” The amount of ink will be increased or reduced according to the wearing status of the printing block. Generally speaking, more ink will be used for new block and less for old block. Brush made of palm pieces is used to evenly and smoothly print with hands with sufficient force. Different from other printing methods, the book layout printed with traditional methods is more elegant, beautiful and full of artistic quality compared with that made of movable-type printing. Compared with books printed with movable-type printing in the early period, the layout is more tidy, even, bright and clear; compared with modern printed books, the layout also has an artistic of manual skill. From the aspect of Buddhism, such layout is more peace, quiet and solemn.

Binding includes procedures, i.e. paging, folding, pinching aligning, bundling up and compaction, page aligning, string twists and turns, front cover and back cover pasting, page ordering, page cutting, drilling and binding, pasting title label, matching folding case, etc. Although the binding procedures look simple, it is in fact a complicated process. Only the procedure of paper twisting will usually need several months of training. To my surprise, in this simple and repeating printing work, the standards are as precise as modern printing equipment: the head margin shall be 2 cun and the lower margin shall be 1 cun, that is, the lower margin shall be 1/2 of the head margin. (The head margin is the upper part of the Buddhist sutras, and the lower margin is the lower part of the Buddhist sutras.) The precision of manual printing at Jinling Sutra Printing House is comparable to modern printing equipment (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2.

Procedures of Jinling Sutras Printing Skill

It is worth mentioning that in the whole process of woodblock printing, most of the tools are manufactured by the craftsmen, and the manufacturing methods are taught by the masters by personal example as well as verbal instruction.

After preliminary research, the writer finds that the aesthetic value embodied by manual engraving is the precious aspect of the Jinling Sutras Printing Skill as well as a shortage for the passing on of the woodblock printing art. For instance, the difficulty in cultivating professional talents, the accurate requests on one-time molding of engraving skills, the labor and time-consuming in product output efficiency, increasing space requirements on storage of woodblocks, technical requirements on long-term preservation of woodblocks (anti-damping, anti-moth, fire proofing) etc. Besides, there are only four masters and apprentices of three generations in Jinling Sutra Printing House, and two of whom are the only apprentices of their masters, talent training and technology inheritance are confronted with a great risk of uncertainty. Although woodblock printing plays an important role in the development and inheritance of China’s traditional culture and artistry, it still has equally prominent technical limitations. Therefore, how to conduct effective and living research on such intangible cultural heritage and use digital technology for its comprehensive protection and inheritance in the digital times has become a particularly necessary proposition.

3 New Vision of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Digital Times

Digital protection refers to the protection of intangible cultural heritage based on digitization, which combines the science and technology with culture and use a series of digital and network technology to collect, save, analyze, process, display and communicate and turn the intangible cultural heritage into sharable and reproducible digital forms through multi-media and virtual reality techniques such as transition, representation, recovering, etc.

Nowadays, digital technology has played an important role in the protection of intangible cultural heritage, and the intangible cultural heritage could be displayed with sound image and technique of human, and becomes a “living” culture. As it were, the protection and inheritance of intangible culture heritage in the times of “internet +” is a new trend. However, there are also many difficulties to be overcome. For instance, digital data of intangible cultural heritage is mostly in the stage of simple filing, and it is hard to structure. Besides, due to the characteristics of intangible culture, the “flowage of human” and its living state, it is difficult to comprehensively display the innovation characteristics, changes in heart, aesthetic consciousness, etc. of the inheritor that takes human as the core.

In the past, the work on intangible cultural heritage mainly focused on “protection”; now, we need to consider the development of intangible cultural heritage under modern living methods; and in the future, we even need to consider how to avoid losing intangible cultural heritage as well as the new embodiment of its cultural value under the globalization context. Therefore, the writer proposes to withdraw the cultural gene and innovation index from the body of the intangible cultural context from the design aspect and carry out living state study and practice to intangible cultural heritage and attach importance to the innovation development of intangible cultural heritage in the digital times and under new production methods and living methods. It is a new vision and effort to transfer from protection to focusing on inheritance and innovation.

4 Living State Study and Practice on Intangible Cultural Heritage – Design and Development of Jinling Sutras Typeface

4.1 Withdrawing of Innovation Factor of Intangible Cultural Heritage – “Jinling Edition” and Jinling Sutras Typeface

Over the past year, the writer’s team has deeply cooperated with the national-level inheritor Master MA Mengqing and the provincial-level inheritor Master DENG Qingzhi of woodblock printing intangible cultural heritage, and we deeply realized that aesthetic consciousness, living background as well as personal understanding to the professional techniques of the inheritors will directly promote the living evolvement of the intangible cultural heritage. Through our comprehensive research to Jinling Sutra Printing House, the writer finds that since the great aspiration of YANG Renshan to compile the Tripitaka is to make it easy to read and study, while, based on the problems such as the binding methods for ancient books and volumes are difficult to turnover the page, new typeface and ancient books and volumes are selected to adapt to the need of the times, and efforts are made to enhance the quality and the famous “Jinling Edition” was then created: “the paper quality of “Jinling Edition” is soft, the character is as large as a coin, the layout is clear, peace and solemn; the figure of the Buddha is engraved with delicate way of cutting, the composition is careful and precise, combining of form and sprit and with clear layer”; it has perfectly combined the traditional Chinese woodblock printing technique with the Buddhist culture and Buddhist art, forming a unique engraving printing style with religiousness, artistry, nature of cultural relics (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3.

Typeface style of Jinling edition in different historical periods

The typeface adopted by Jinling Sutra Printing House is mutually created by the writer and the engraver, which is characterized by “the horizontal stroke being even, the vertical stroke being straight, the dot shaped like a melon seed, the left-falling stroke shaped like a knife, the turning stroke shaped like a Chinese Honey locust Spine and the right-falling stroke shaped like a shovel”, which are more suitable for engraving. This typeface not only accelerates the speed of the engraver but also looks beautiful, neat and uniform. With the development of society, and the invasion of digitalization to the people’s daily life, the writer finds that the Printing House is lacking of “sample writers” (In the early period of the Printing House, one writer shall work with sever engravers, from which we can see the importance of writer). At present, among these three generations of masters and apprentices, two of them are the only apprentices to their masters. Wherein, Master MA Mengqing mainly works on repairing ancient books, and only Master DENG Qingzhi can write samples. However, if it needs to cut new blocks, most of the time they will adopt the existing Xisong or Small Standard Song as the typeface. So the writer’s team decides to start with the Song typeface in the “Jinling Edition”, which embodies the style of peace, quiet and solemn and systematically tidy, to analyze, compare, withdraw and construct, and cooperate with Beijing Hanyi Fonts to develop the “Jinling Sutras Typeface” through mutual cooperation of “scientific research of universities and colleges – intangible cultural heritage inheritors of the Printing House – Font Enterprise”. The original “peace, quiet and solemn” style Song typeface is the innovation factor of intangible cultural heritage withdrawn from “Jinling Edition”, while the systematically development and design of the “Jinling Sutras” typeface is the solution to innovation design.

4.2 Innovation Practice that Drives the Intangible Cultural Heritage with Design – Design of “Jinling Sutras” Typeface

Selection of Block-Printed Edition – Biography of Buddhism.

The key to the design of Jinling Sutras Typeface is the selection of model. Jinling Edition has experienced the practice of eight generations of inheritors in different periods. Each Buddhist Sutras has its own manual style and aesthetic feeling. Through four times of field investigations and several times of communication with the inheritor DENG Qingzhi, the writer finally selected the Biography of Buddhism as the research object. There are two reasons to select this book: firstly, the Biography of Buddhism was completed in the period of Lay Buddhist YANG Renshan, and it has greatly embodied the style and look of “Jinling Edition”, with square and upright, elegant, peace, quiet and solemn typeface; this block-printed edition has not been circulated in the market for too many times, so it is well kept and can better display the original appearance of the engraved typeface, and reduce the wearing and mellow edges and angles of typeface caused by repetitive printing (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4.

Biography of Buddhism in the period of Lay Buddhist YANG Renshan

Depiction of Character Pattern.

Depiction of pattern is a process of re-learning. In the process of computer depiction, we can feel the deep and fast engraving of the engraver and unadorned and power of handcraft from the rising and falling of strokes; characteristics of the strokes, radicals and font structures are summarized and extracted to sum up the styles and characteristics of the fonts. This is a process of re-engraving, although the tools are different, the purpose of this process is to restore the original form of the typeface to the most extent (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5.

Depiction of character pattern

Determination of Styles and Analysis on Competitive Products.

Re-engraving is not the results for design of Jinling Sutras Typeface. Through the depiction of over 200 characters, the writer’s team has gradually extracted the style of the typeface: quiet and solemn, honest and unadorned. The design positioning is: fonts of main body.

Next, the writer’s team has analyzed the developed competitive products in the market. A similar font is Yue Song, a square and upright Qing Dynasty block-printed edition, which takes the movable type block printed Chapters of the Four Books of Hall of Martial Valor as the source of creation. It pursues the beauty of primitive simplicity and nature, with slender font. The strokes can embody the artistic conception of writing while demonstrating the power of engraving, exercising a combination of inflexibility and yielding by combining the writing and engraving. The other font is the folk book engraving font in Zhejiang, which is a computer movable character font that reproduces the engraving fonts of ancient books. It adopts local block-printed edition of Zhejiang, with both thick and thin strokes and simulates the original block-printed characters, to keep the unique style of each character to the most extent while presenting consistent style (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6.

Determination of style of Jinling Sutras Typeface and analysis on competitive products

The innovation factor – pattern and appearance of characters of Jinling Edition extracted from the world-level intangible culture heritage - China woodblock printing technique, what the writer needs to do is to carry out innovation design on the basis of maintaining its original nature and style. After systematically straightening single character and summarizing its design style, the writer has systematically designed the whole set fonts of 9,169 characters. In this process, the writer’s team has deeply cooperated with Master DENG Qingzhi and experienced the understanding of the engravers to the characters from each stroke. The presentation of the inheritor’s personal aesthetic consciousness in the process of the engraving is expressed and analyzed with design language. The importance of this process is to grasp the “living state evolvement” of the technique and the innovation characteristics, psychological changes and aesthetic consciousness of the inheritors that takes human as the core, and then, start from design and reflect and re-create it with design language.

Characteristics of Strokes.

Except for maintaining the characteristics of “the horizontal stroke being even, the vertical stroke being straight, the dot shaped like a melon seed, the left-falling stroke shaped like a knife, the turning stroke shaped like a Chinese Honey locust Spine and the right-falling stroke shaped like a shovel” of original fonts of Jinling Edition, in the process of font evolvement in the development of the times, the aesthetic intention of modern engravers is analyzed to stretch and highlight the left-falling stroke, make the turning stroke look like the goose neck boom, and the round angles are protruded when dealing with details, thus the temperature of the handcraft is manifested. A 45° corner cut is adopted for the intersection of two lines, which can not only display the cutting trace but also avoid weakening of strokes in computer fonts (Fig. 7).

Fig. 7.

Characteristics of strokes

Standards for Strokes and Radicals.

Strokes and radicals are basic parts as well as the basic elements for font design. In the process of comparison and coordination, the strokes and radicals are gradually extracted, unified and standardized (Figs. 8 and 9).

Fig. 8.

Standards for design of strokes

Fig. 9.

Standards for design of radicals

Analysis on Font Structure.

Depiction of pattern is a process of re-learning. In the process of computer depiction, we can feel the deep and fast engraving of the engraver and unadorned and power of handcraft from the rising and falling of strokes; characteristics of the strokes, radicals and font structures are summarized and extracted to sum up the styles and characteristics of the fonts. This is a process of re-engraving, although the tools are different, the purpose of this process is to restore the original form of the typeface to the most extent (Fig. 10).

Fig. 10.

Analysis on font structure

Presentation of Foundation Characters of Jinling Sutras Typeface.

For woodblock engraving characters, the engravers will engrave the characters on the wood blocks, and the size of type face is flexible. The strokes are of different degree of weights and poorly standardized, which lead to a poor reading effect. However, at the same time, the alternation of words and avoidance among strokes will better remedy its shortcomings in reading effect. It is impossible to make the type face of printing fonts differ with the character pattern under existing technical conditions, and therefore, in the process of manufacturing, it is necessary to keep the characters of the same typeface, even stroke, standard and uniform style, and the type face frame is adopted to define the size of the characters and the body frame is adopted to define the distance between characters.

The writer’s team has developed 9,169 characters in the past 10 months and formed a complete peace and solemn style “Jinling Sutra Typeface”, which is the first step of practice; then, the digital presentation of Jinling woodblock printing technique and the APP production will make more people understand this world level intangible cultural heritage through network and digital platforms, so as to realize globally sharing of culture, and make the culture of China shared by the world; in the process, deep and careful interview and research are carried out on inheritors through pictorial records and book design, which have recorded the understanding, inspiration and living evolvement, etc. of the inheritors to Jinling Sutra technique in the past two years when we closely cooperate with the inheritors; finally, we have cooperated with the government departments to build and construct Jinling Sutra intangible brand, and let the innovation design enter the world combining with the city culture and image of Nanjing and through the platforms such as Nanjing Design Week, 100% Design London, Paris Design Week, New York Design Week, etc., so as to realize driving the innovation development of intangible culture with design, and further step forward from the protection layer to the inheritance and innovation layers to realize more social value of culture and produce economic value (Fig. 11).

Fig. 11.

Foundation words of Jinling Sutras Typeface

5 Approaches and Measures to Drive the Innovation Development of Intangible Cultural Heritage with Design

5.1 People-Oriented – Core of Living State Research

The characteristic of intangible cultural heritage is “intangible”, that is, people-oriented living state cultural heritage. It takes people-oriented technique, experience and spirit as the core and is characterized by living evolvement. The “people” mentioned above refer to the inheritors of the intangible cultural heritage. With the transformation of the production and living methods and the changes of environment, their understanding to the technique will have the impression of the main body, and therefore, their mental activity, aesthetic consciousness, living experience, etc. shall be taken as the objects of research. Generally speaking, during the deep cooperation with the inheritors, we will usually find the innovation factor of intangible cultural heritage.

5.2 Withdrawing of Innovation Factor of Intangible Cultural Heritage – Key to Living State Research

It is important to protect the intangible cultural heritages, but it is more important to obtain the resources and motive power for innovation from the heritages, so as to provide materials, inspiration, etc. for our innovation. As it is said by Mr. FEI Xiaotong, “we need to study the seeds of our culture and how to maintain the seeds and meanwhile keep the healthy gene.” For withdrawing of innovation factor of intangible culture, we need to withdraw the most distinct characteristics and deeply research the living experience, behaviors, sentiments, aesthetics of the inheritors according to the resources collected; consider the development of the intangible culture in existing living method; avoid the lost and change of intangible cultural heritage; integrate it with the culture combining with the new technology in the digital times; and seek the new embodiment of cultural value in the global context.

5.3 Driving the Innovative Development of Intangible Cultural Heritage with Design – Approaches and Measures for Living State Research

With the traditional perspective, one inspects the origins and development of things and concepts from the dimension of history in order to master the past and know better about the present. In the design thinking, the traditional perspective requires us to take in the wisdom from traditions, through traditional forms to observe the thinking mode, traditional culture, reading habits, living styles, traditional design ideas, craft skills and materials, and communication media, and to design based on it so as to enlighten the modern innovative design. Meanwhile, we need to make it clear that thinking with the traditional perspective is not to fully follow and conservatively copy traditions and transplant symbols, but to discard what has outlived its time and develop the new, to follow the tide of the times, and to explore the interaction between inheritance and innovation, nationalization and internationalization, traditional methods and modern science and technology based on the current living style, so as to revitalize the design.

From the aspect of evolution of human civilization, human has entered the knowledge and network age from the agrarian age and the industrial age, and the corresponding economic form has entered the knowledge and network economy to natural economy and market economy. In this evolution process, the design has always promoted the alteration production and living methods, indicated the degree of evolution of material civilization, and reflected the evolution level of spiritual civilization. The innovation development is driven by design and led with design thought (treat the intangible cultural heritage innovation problem with the “traditional and future perspective” of the complementary design thought); the living state evolvement of intangible cultural heritage as is taken as an research object; approaches and measures such as network platform, intangible cultural heritage products, experience service, publicizing channel, system construction, brand building, profit pattern, audience interaction, etc. are adopted to carry out systematic research; finally, through complicated innovation and design process, it is transformed to corresponding innovation design program of intangible cultural heritage.

5.4 Construction of a Sustainable Development Ecological System with Coordinately Developed “Inheritor- Intangible Cultural Heritage - Environment” that Takes Design as the Cohesion-Social Value of Living State Research

Nowadays, living evolvement is an important inheriting characteristic of the intangible cultural heritage of China. Therefore, the development of intangible heritage shall effectively enter the market and become a circulating commodity with high added value and cultural value, and soundly interact with the market and promote each other, so as to become the force and motive power that drive the development of social culture. Nowadays, mature market operation system is required to bring traditional cultural heritage into the modern lives, and it requires the participation and cooperation of parties such as proper artists, designers, craftsmen, research institute of college and universities, enterprises, governments, etc., and it needs to be connected to proper commercial platforms. It needs to select proper moment to carry out media release and market transmission to build a mature intangible cultural heritage. On the basis of maintaining the original pattern and vision characteristics of intangible handicraft, we should adopt modern aesthetic consciousness and lifestyle to carry out cross-field innovation design for intangible handicrafts, so as to inject innovative products with traditional aesthetic and process features for modern life.

6 Conclusion

In conclusion, the writer’s team takes Jinling Sutra Printing House as an example to carry out living state research on intangible cultural heritage in the digital times, and explore the “innovation factor” of intangible culture based on people-oriented theory. We propose to drive the innovative development of intangible cultural heritage with design, and construct the sustainable development ecological system of “inheritor – intangible cultural heritage - environment”. It has provided effective application methods for national intangible cultural heritage in the new era, created more social value, cultural value, even economic value.