ZHOU YING was giving instructions to a tableful of adults who were making tongcao paintings in Guangdong Province in early June.

They all seemed to take great care to draw each line and brush colors under Zhou’s guidance. Polychromatic human and animal portraits then took vivid shape on the milky paper, which was made of a local plant tetrapanax papyriferus.

Tongcao painting was named an intangible cultural heritage by the Guangzhou’s Yuexiu District government in 2015.

“I’m glad so many ‘big friends’ are taking this much interest in the art,” says Zhou, who has engaged in tongcao painting for more than a decade.

It’s the first time that Zhou and her team opened themselves up to the public via the home-sharing platform Airbnb. “We’ve launched our products on Airbnb to pass on and publicize the art form, since many people of the younger generations are using the platform at the moment,” Zhou says.

Tongcao paintings were mainly exported to Western countries in the 18th and 19th centuries and featured such social scenes as government official portraits, textile-making and art performance in the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). They were quite a hit among the Westerners for showcasing Chinese elements via Western painting methods.

Zhou is among an increasing number of art masters who are embracing opportunities to show their arts to a wider audience.

To date, more than 50 Chinese intangible cultural heritages are available for visitor experience at Airbnb, the company reports.

They cover traditional handicrafts, tea art, pottery, gourmet food, opera, kung fu, board games, calligraphy and painting in major cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Sichuan Province’s capital Chengdu.

About 30 of them are world-class, and the total number of intangible cultural heritage experiences is expected to double this year, says Peng Tao, president of Airbnb China.

The goal is to protect and promote traditional Chinese culture and upgrade tourism experiences by joining hands with the governments of destinations with important culture elements.

The company has recently announced strategic partnership with several district and city governments, including Guangzhou’s Yuexiu District and Beijing’s Dongcheng District.

“We’d like to introduce Chinese intangible cultural heritages abroad and improve their competitiveness among international cultures,” Peng says. “So, more people around the world could understand and experience Chinese cultural connotations and people’s enthusiasm.”

Airbnb would offer those intangible culture inheritors tourism skills training to ensure their better interactions with tourists and promote unique Chinese traditions.

Those inheritors would ultimately show up on the home-sharing platform along with what they have to offer for traveler’s pick, according to Peng.

So far, in addition to tongcao painting, such intangible culture experiences in Yuexiu District as lion dancing, cake modeling and paper-cut, have all been launched at Airbnb, which has also rolled out tourism routes for travelers to better savor the district’s cluster of more than 400 historical residential buildings of Chinese and Western elements.

According to a tourism innovation and culture protection report jointly conducted by the World Tourism Alliance and Airbnb, the number of experience-based products has broken 30,000 in over 1,000 cities across the globe at the home-sharing platform.  (China Daily)