Bridging East and West: How Jiangsu Engineering College's Mandarin Promotion Practice Empowers Guider's Intangible Heritage for Global Outreach

In Guide County, Qinghai Province, the inheritance of Tibetan embroidery and wood carving faces a practical bottleneck: exquisite craftsmanship cannot be fully expressed to tourists and buyers due to limited Mandarin proficiency. In the summer of 2026, a practice team from Jiangsu Engineering College intervened with a 'Mandarin promotion + intangible heritage' model, aiming to clear this blockage from the language level. This practice, on the surface, is about language teaching, but at its core, it touches the critical step from heritage preservation to industrial communication.

Background

Guide County, located in Qinghai's Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, boasts rich intangible heritage, including county-level embroidery, traditional music, prefecture-level wood carving, and the national-level 'Zerou' dance. However, four key inheritors—embroidery artist An Guomei, musician Zeng Taiduojie, wood carver Dang Guoping, and dancer Lhamo—struggle with Mandarin when explaining techniques or engaging with cultural tourism, hindering the effective transmission of cultural stories behind their art.

The team focused on one-on-one coaching. They helped An Guomei articulate in Mandarin how embroidery drives rural income; compiled standard Chinese background materials for Zeng Taiduojie's 'Clear Yellow River' song; guided Dang Guoping to explain the cultural symbolism of Tibetan-Chinese fusion wood carving motifs; and enhanced Lhamo's Mandarin narration for Tibetan dance. These actions essentially create a 'language toolkit' for heritage to reach external audiences.

Industry Impact

From a textile and handicraft industry perspective, this practice carries deeper significance. Tibetan embroidery, blending Han and Tibetan motifs, complements eastern 'Jianghai heritage'. Improved Mandarin directly boosts the efficiency of product promotion in cultural tourism exhibitions, e-commerce livestreams, and international exchanges. For buyers, the inheritor's ability to clearly tell the story behind the craft often determines the product's premium.

Similarly, for wood carving, Dang Guoping's improved Mandarin allows for precise communication of product value when tapping into eastern markets. The bilingual heritage materials produced by the team also provide standardized content for school programs and external performances, reducing dissemination costs.

This model also reveals a new path for east-west heritage collaboration: combining eastern universities' intellectual resources with western local heritage can efficiently address language and communication gaps. For the textile and apparel industry, similar 'Mandarin + heritage' practices, if extended to embroidery and brocade belts in Xinjiang or Yunnan, could drive ethnic handicrafts from 'skill preservation' to 'brand communication'.

Practical Recommendations

For Buyers - Prioritize inheritors with established Mandarin narration systems when sourcing Tibetan embroidery or wood carving, to leverage higher product premiums. - Include inheritors' language skills as a criterion in cultural tourism procurement, facilitating future exhibitions and livestream sales.

For Foreign Trade Enterprises - When engaging with western ethnic handicraft zones, proactively offer language training to help inheritors craft bilingual product stories, reducing export communication barriers. - Utilize outcomes from practices like this one—such as bilingual heritage materials—as foundational content for brand promotion, enhancing cultural recognition in international markets.