In early winter in Qinghai, the cold wind carries the clear, high-altitude air, yet it cannot extinguish the warmth and vitality within the intangible cultural heritage workshops. Following the mineral luster of Thangka paintings and the flowing silk threads of embroidery, I embarked on a research journey exploring the integration of finance and the intangible cultural heritage industry. Along the way, the collision and intertwining of craftsmanship and new opportunities in the industry made me truly feel that the precise dripping of financial resources has brought vigorous vitality to intangible cultural heritage techniques that have been dormant for thousands of years in the new era.
The Thangka workshops in Tongren City, Huangnan Prefecture, were once a microcosm of many intangible cultural heritage (ICH) transmission scenarios—the long creation cycle and high material costs became bottlenecks restricting their inheritance and development. The predicament of ICH inheritors like Zaxi Jiancuo is essentially a common problem in the early stages of the industrialization of traditional crafts. The targeted credit loan support from Postal Savings Bank not only solved the urgent needs of individual inheritors but also revealed the core logic of financial empowerment: financial resources are not simply a matter of injecting funds, but rather a respect for and protection of the "time value" of ICH transmission, allowing inheritors to focus on honing their skills and expanding the boundaries of their transmission.
From Thangka painting to Qing embroidery, the transformation paths of different intangible cultural heritage categories demonstrate the universal value of financial support for intangible cultural heritage. The rise of the Qing embroidery industry in Haidong City owes much to the credit support from the Mutual Aid Rural Commercial Bank. However, what is even more noteworthy is that financial assistance has brought not only expansion of enterprise scale but also a deep integration of the intangible cultural heritage industry with the improvement of people's livelihoods. The transformation of embroiderers from "maintaining their homes while generating income" is a landmark achievement of financial precision in connecting with the intangible cultural heritage industry to drive employment for villagers. This has made me deeply realize that finance is the key link in facilitating this win-win situation of "cultural inheritance + livelihood empowerment."
In fact, the revitalization of Qinghai's intangible cultural heritage industry is by no means an accidental success of a single financial product, but rather a systematic project of "top-level guidance + institutional innovation + platform support." Under the coordination of the Qinghai Branch of the People's Bank of China, various financial institutions have launched exclusive products such as "Thangka Loan" and "Qing Embroidery Loan," breaking the homogenization of traditional credit products and achieving a precise match between financial services and the characteristics of the intangible cultural heritage industry. Meanwhile, the establishment of the "Qingxinrong" platform has used data to empower and solve the credit problems of micro and small enterprises, making financial services more efficient and inclusive. This advancement from product innovation to ecosystem building has enabled the intangible cultural heritage industry to have the ability to generate its own revenue.
From the strokes of a Thangka painting to the stitches of a traditional embroidery, finance is gently yet firmly empowering millennia-old intangible cultural heritage techniques, giving them wings to soar. Guided by the spirit of the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee and with the continued advancement of the "Five Major Tasks" in finance, these ancient crafts, carrying the memories of the nation, will undoubtedly shine even brighter on Qinghai's journey towards high-quality development, writing a moving chapter in which cultural inheritance and economic development complement each other.
