Finding Better Fish to Fry
In May 2016, when President Xi Jinping visited Bacha, a small fishing village in Heilongjiang Province in the northeast bordering Russia, it rained continuously. But that didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of the Hezhes, the ethnic group living in the village, who welcomed him with traditional songs and a tour of the Yimakan Institute.
Yimakan, storytelling in the Hezhe language, using both verse and prose forms, has been recognized by UNESCO as an intangible cultural heritage, an official acknowledgment of the artistic contribution of a group with a population of only around 5,000 people,
