Consultant
Institute of Anthropology
School of Social Development
East China Normal University
August 2014
The author is grateful to UNDP, SEAC, CICETE, the Ethnic Affairs Commission of Yunnan
Province, the Ethnic and Religious Affairs Bureau of Xinping County (Yunnan), the Ethnic and
Religious Affairs Bureau of Ninglang County (Yunnan), the Ethnic and Religious Affairs Bureau of Wuzhishan Municipality (Hainan), the Handicrafts Association of Huayao Dai in Xinping
County, the Handicrafts Association of Mosuo in Ninglang County, and the Li Brocade
Association in Wuzhishan Municipality for their assistance during this evaluation, and in particular Yu Shuo (SEAC), Zhang Jing (CICETE), Li Liping (UNDP) and Yue Yangqi (UNDP) for their kind assistance during the field visits to Yunnan and Hainan.
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Acronyms
Abstract
1. Introduction
Background, goal and methodological approach
Process and purpose of the evaluation
Criteria and methods used in the evaluation
Constraints and limitations in the evaluation
2. Development Intervention and the Overall Effect
Summary of the project implementation
Baseline surveys
Output 1
Output 2
Output 3
The follow-up arrangements
The overall effect
3. Impacts
On traditional handicrafts
On policy and policy decision making
On ethnic minority’s culture
On rural community
On women
4. Lessons Learned and Recommendations
The fragility of the local associations and sustainability
Training style
Intellectual property rights
The market orientation of handicrafts
Co-operations
Publicity
The site in Hubei
The duration of the project
Annexes
List of Project Publications
List of Media Publications
List of Community-based Organizations Supported by this Project
List of Partners
Questionnaire
Itinerary & List of Stakeholders and Beneficiaries met
Terms of Reference
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CDD - Community Driven Development
CICETE - China International Center for Economic and Technical Exchange
ERAB - Ethnic & Religious Affairs Bureau
MDG-F
MDGs
- Millennium Development Goals Achievement Fund
- Millennium Development Goals
NGOs - Non-governmental organizations
SEAC - State Ethnic Affairs Commission
TOR - Terms of Reference
UN - United Nations
UNDP - United Nations Development Program
UNESCO - United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
VEC - Villages with Ethnic Characteristics
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Both projects under evaluation (the Sub-Project on Protection and Development of Ethnic
Minority Handcrafts in Yunnan and the Sub-Project on Protection and Development of Li Brocade in Hainan) are sub-projects of UNDP’s project “Sustainable Ethnic Minorities Cultural Industry
Development” and were financially supported by the Jala Group Co. Ltd, China’s leading cosmetics company, with total contribution of 1 million USD. During the process of implementation, UNDP, SEAC, CICETE, Jala Group, and the local governments in Yunnan and
Hainan cooperated with one another to assist the local ethnic minority communities to establish and develop their handicrafts associations, to improve their skills in business management and in textile production, to help local people pride on their own cultural heritage, to enrich their livelihood activities, to facilitate the communications between different ethnic groups, and to build a harmonious society. Throughout the project, the site-selection, implementation of project activities, the effect, the effectiveness, the monitoring, and the follow-up arrangements have been very successful and helpful. The project has generated many positive impacts (i.e., on policy and decision-making, on local people’s handicraft techniques, on women empowerment, on the maintenance of rural community, on the reviving of people’s pride of their cultural heritage and so on), which deserve to be replicated in other similar areas. The lessons learned and recommendations are related to the sustainability of the local associations, training styles/approaches, intellectual property rights, market orientation, and publicity.
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The Sub-Project on Protection and Development of Ethnic Minority Handicrafts in Yunnan belongs to UNDP’s project known as Sustainable Ethnic Minorities Cultural Industry
Development and has been financially supported by Jala Group. The project received US$450,000 from Jala Group with an additional US$300,000 equivalent in kind from SEAC. From February
2011 to December 2014, UNDP, SEAC, and CICETE have cooperated and carried out this project jointly. Pilot sites selected for this project include the Huayao Dai community in Pingzhai village,
Gasa Township, Xinping County, Yunnan province, and the Mosuo community in Wenquan
(Walabi) village, Yongning Township, Ninglang County, Yunnan province. Two sites in Hubei province, Yichang municipality and Enshi Tujia-Miao Prefecture, are also enlisted on the project proposal, but no local communities have been selected and instead the Hubei sites sent representatives to the training workshops in Beijing and Xinjiang run by the project.
In December 2011, UNDP, CICETE and Wuzhishan Municipality government in Hainan had signed an agreement on the Sub-Project on Protection and Development of Li Brocade in Hainan.
This project received US$250,000 from Jala Group and another US$250,000 equivalent in kind from Wuzhishan Municipality government. The project lasts from 2012 to 2015.
The new notion and approach of culture-based development can be traced back to 2006 when the Spanish government donated a huge sum of money to the United Nations system to establish the Millennium Development Goals Achievement Fund (MDG-F) and identified eight challenges to the human development worldwide in the UNDP/Spain MDG-F Framework, one of which was the “culture and development” (http://mdgfund.org/content/cultureanddevelopment). The
2008-2011 “China Culture and Development Partnership Framework” (CDPF) project had pioneered this kind of development and left rich and invaluable experience, knowledge and information, one of which is the notion that “culture and development means not only using culture as a tool for economic advancement, but also all our perceptions, actions and words are in some way determined by or based on culture and development cannot take place unless cultural considerations are integrated into it; culture and development are in effect inseparable” 1 .
Just like the CDPF project, this project on handicrafts also focuses on China’s ethnic minorities who live on the margins of Chinese society, both geographically and socially. China claims to have 55 ethnic minorities, which have greatly enriched the cultural diversity of the country. These ethnic minorities comprise 8.5 percent of the national population, nearly 114 million, and most of them live in the remote areas with poor infrastructure. It has long been
1 Tapp, Nicholas & Xu Wu. 2011 . Final Evaluation of Millennium Development Goals Fund (MDG-F) China
Culture & Development Partnership Framework (4 November 2008 - 3 November 2011), UN CDPF Publication
No. 24, p19.
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difficult for development programs and projects to reach them effectively and they have largely fallen behind in the country’s overall development. Moreover, influenced by the urbanization and globalization, ethnic minorities are also facing the fast disappearance of many of their traditional cultures, which had once been part of their community life but now are no longer practiced by young people. Due to these issues, UNDP proposed to launch a series of culture-based development projects in ethnic minority areas and aimed to enhance the protection of ethnic cultural traditions and sustainable development through using minorities’ cultural resources and especially through encouraging woman’s participation in marketing their traditional cultural activities (i.e., handicrafts).
Considering the weakness of both official bureaus and development agencies in marketing, this project had tried to cooperate with private enterprises. As a well-known private company in cosmetic industry in China, Jala Group had contributed one million US dollars to this project, in addition to sending personnel to the project sites to investigate and inspect. Jala’s participation has also demonstrated that the approach of culture-based development has won the recognition from different sectors of the contemporary society.
This project applied the method of Community Driven Development (CDD) and NGOs involvement, which has been described as “guided by the government, advised by the experts
(consultants), and dominated by the community.” It is aimed to strengthen the construction of local community organization and the related institution, and to improve their capacities in management and sustainable development of their cultural and natural resources. In this project, constructing local community organizations has been one of the key outputs and a considerable part of the resources has been spent on it.
The project aims to make contributions to the following three major outcomes: (1)
Alternative livelihood developed and promoted for ethnic minorities through innovative ethnic cultural product development; (2) Cultural skills transmission to younger generation promoted and sustainable development of ethnic minority culture promoted; (3) Public awareness on ethnic cultural diversity raised, ethnic minority communities’ pride in their own cultural identity strengthened, and national solidarity promoted. All the project activities can be classified into the following three categories (outputs):
(1) capacity building (Local livelihood improved through enhanced self-development capacity and innovative ethnic cultural product development of pilot communities)
(2) marketing channel construction (Marketing channels for ethnic cultural products broadened through linkage with modern tourism development)
(3) publicity (ethnic cultural products promoted through publicity events and activities)
This evaluation was carried out in August 2014, including group interview of officials from
UNDP, SEAC, and CICETE during August 5-7, of officials from the Ethnic Affairs Commission of Yunnan province on August 8, of stakeholders and beneficiaries in Huayao Dai Association in
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Pingzhai village (Yunnan) during August 9-11, of stakeholders and beneficiaries in Mosuo
Association in Wenquan village (Yunnan), and of stakeholders and beneficiaries in Li Brocade
Association in Fanmao village (Wuzhishan, Hainan). Also, the author conducted phone interview of stakeholders and beneficiaries from Hubei and two experts employed by the project on August
19 and August 24.
The general and specific objectives of this evaluation are given in the TOR. They include the goal of making an overall evaluation of the project implementation in the light of the indicators identified by the project proposal. To summarize the key outcomes, findings and lessons learned and suggestions/recommendations for the follow-up programs. The scope of this evaluation includes all organizations involved in the project, stakeholders and beneficiaries in all project sites, all outputs and their effects and impacts.
The criteria for this evaluation include: relevance (the extent to which the objectives of a development intervention are consistent with beneficiary requirements, country needs, and partner and donor policies), efficiency (how resources are converted into results), effectiveness (the extent to which management capacities and arrangements put in place supports the achievement of results), impact and ultimate sustainability (the likelihood that the result of the project are durable and can be maintained and replicated) 2 .
The methodologies employed for this evaluation included an extensive review of all project publications such as baseline surveys and field mission reports and monitoring reports, direct observations of impacts through field visits in the project pilot sites, structured interviews of stakeholders in Beijing, provincial capital city and county seats, formal and informal interviews of villagers, focal discussion groups with villagers, and the use of photography.
Limitations on the evaluation conducted: the brevity of time allowed for this evaluation made it was impossible to visit all sites influenced by the project so that certain studies have been based on documentary evidence. At the time when the evaluation report was being written, the project had certain activities not finished or just started, which would exert new influences, such as the implementation of the Xiaoying Plan supported by Youcheng Foundation in August 2014 and the movement “Calling for Li Brocade Products” promoted by the Li Brocade Association in October
- November 2014.
2 Tapp and Wu 2011, P16
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2.1 Overview
In the early spring of 2012, the project sent a team to conduct the baseline surveys in Xinping county (Yunnan), Ninglang county (Yunnan) and Wuzhishan municipality (Hainan) and finally chose three villages as pilot sites: Pingzhai village (Xinping county, Yunnan), Wenquan village
(Ninglang county, Yunnan), and Fanmao village (Wuzhishan municipality, Hainan). From then on, a series of activities have been implemented, including the four major training programs focused on improving handicraft techniques, which were hold in Pingzhai village (Xinping), Wenquan village (Ninglang), Beijing, and Yining (Xinjiang). A group of professional experts had been organized to teach or direct these programs, who were specialized in constructing community organizations, improving handicraft techniques, designing, dyeing, and marketing. The project also helped ethnic minority communities to go to domestic and overseas expositions for their products and assisted them to apply for the UNESCO AWARD of Excellence for Handcrafts. At the same time, activities for improving the capacity in organization construction and organization management, constructions of physical buildings and virtual platforms for information exchange, marketing channel construction, publicity, and monitoring were all carried out accordingly and timely.
2.2 Baseline surveys
The Baseline survey was carried out in February 2012 by a team of experts, who visited the local government, academic institutions, private companies, potential partners, and investigated the local economic condition, local ethnic cultural tourism planning , different resources for development, and the requirements for local community development. The survey team also conducted a participatory appraisal in order to know the advantages, disadvantages, opportunities and difficulties in the protection and development of local traditional cultures and the approaches for building marketing channels. This baseline survey laid a solid foundation for the planning of the project activities. Similar survey was also conducted in May 2012 in Xinping and Ninglang counties in Yunnan province.
2.3 Output 1- community capacity building
The ultimate goal of this output was to increase local people’s economic income and standard of living, through innovating and developing ethnic minorities’ cultural products and constructing alternative livelihood. The key activities were the training of villager’s handcraft techniques and community leaders’ capacity in management.
From May 11 to May 23, 2012, a training program focusing on innovative design and development of cultural products, sample producing, management of community organizations, and marketing skills had been hold in Huayao Dai community and Mosuo community one after
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another. A team of experts was formed for these training programs, including Zhou Weidong,
Joseph Lo, Zhou Xizhu, Luo Lili, and Zhou Ziming, who were specialized in building community organizations, designing innovated handcraft products, building marketing channels, and managing associations/projects. Over 60 villagers (some of whom were leaders of community organizations or owners of private enterprises) had participated in the training programs. During the training program in Mosuo community, designer Joseph Lo had invented more than ten new products in hand-made textile (scarf) in order to solve the challenge resulted from machine production (in large quantity and lower price). Twelve local villagers who had received training in the workshop of making new textile production later became teachers of their 473 fellow villagers.
These new textile products were sent to the exhibitions and stores in Hong Kong and Singapore
(i.e., Tangs Singapore ordered eight different kinds of scarfs from Mosuo community in May
2013). These training programs have had great impacts on the female villagers and also showed the direction for the following project activities.
In September 2012, a training program/workshop, focusing on the development of ethnic minority handicrafts, was hold in Beijing. The content of this program included the analyses of feasibility, business planning, case studies, marketing, cost price, product design, and financial management. Trainees (villagers) had been organized to visit the famous shopping centers such as
IKEA and South Luogu Lane and to learn these companies’ experience in developing product series, setting up product line and standardization, and retailing. There were 41 trainees (7 from
Mosuo community, 15 from Li community, 14 from Huayao Dai community, and 5 from Hubei) and 78 percent of them were women. Later, when the workshop was over, these trainees became instructors in their own communities and shared their knowledge and skills with their fellow villagers. It was estimated that totally 857 villagers had been benefited from the project workshop
(70 in Mosuo community, 61 in Li community, 226 in Huayao Dai community, 500 in Hubei).
During the workshop, a platform for trainees’ information exchange was set up and more than
2000 villagers became the indirect beneficiaries of this workshop. Also after this workshop, under the direction of Zhou Weidong, the Li Brocade Association was formally founded and registered.
In May 2013, another training workshop was hold in Yining, Xinjiang, which combined the project studies, policy studies, sample product exhibition, model handcraft associations visiting, and information exchange. There were 76 people who participated in this workshop, most of whom were from the project pilot sites in Yunnan and Hainan while the rest from Inner Mongolia,
Hubei, Qinghai and Xinjiang. Sixty-six percent of the trainees were women and seventy-six ethnic minority. Topics discussed in the workshop included how to accelerate the sustainable development of local associations (including organization construction and management, innovation in handicraft design and techniques, standardization of the production, construction of market niches for handicrafts and so on). Trainees also visited three embroidery associations in
Xinjiang. After this workshop, the Huayao Dai Association in Pingzhai village standardized its management rule and reorganized their office and the exhibition rooms (of their products). After
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this workshop, the Li Brocade Association in Wuzhishan set up its regulations on running training workshops and on product innovation, besides unified the villagers’ supply channels of raw materials.
In April 2014, another workshop focusing on eco-friendly natural dyeing was hold in the
Mosuo community, Wenquan village, and the trainees were from the three pilot sites. Joseph Lo, the instructor, applied the learning-and-practicing teaching method and asked trainees to look for local natural dyeing materials and demonstrated the whole dyeing process which had also been videotaped for trainees’ quick reference. All trainees had actively engaged in this training workshop and learned a lot of information about the eco-friendly dyeing. In the field visit in
Fanmao village for the evaluation, local villagers especially showed the author some of their works finished in this dyeing workshop -- spools of thread in various colors. Aqi, the former chair of the Mosuo Association told the author that this dyeing workshop had greatly widened her horizons as certain knowledge/secrets in making the natural dye were new to her.
From the angle of associations, the training programs brought to them by the project had been impressive and significant. Take the Li Brocade Association as an example, in order to improve the villagers’ skills, the project had assisted the association in running the following workshops: the Master- Apprentice Li Brocade Skills Workshop (October - November 2012, for 30 days, 25 trainees), the Yang Weaving Method in Li Brocade Workshop (October 2013, for 5 days, 15 trainees), the Designing and Techniques Workshop (November 2013, for 3 days, 35 trainees), the
Innovated Designing in Li Brocade Workshop (September - October 2014, for 60 days), the
Sewing Skills in Li Brocade Workshop (September 2014, for 15 days, 20 trainees); Also, the Li
Brocade Association sent representatives to the following workshops run by the project: the
Protection and Development of Handcrafts Workshop in Beijing (September 2012, for 7 days, 15 trainees), the Capacity in Handcrafts Development Workshop in Yining, Xinjiang (May 2013, for
10 days, 10 trainees), the Award of Excellence for Handcrafts Workshop in Chuxiong, Yunnan
(September 2013, for 10 days, 5 trainees), and the Natural Dyeing Workshop in Wenquan Village,
Ninglang, Yunnan (April 2014, for 10 days, 8 trainees).
Photo: work of natural dyeing finished by villagers from the Li Brocade Association
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Photo: scarfs made by Mosuo women won the UNESCO award
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Activities of constructing community organizations and improving their capacity in management included: (1) A community association was set up in Fanmao village (Li), while the associations in Pingzhai (Huayao Dai) and Wenquan (Mosuo) villages finished the election of the second administration. (2) A group of young administrators of the associations emerged, represented by Dao Xiangmei (Huayao Dai Association) and Huang Licai (Li Brocade
Association). Aqi Duzhima, the former chair of Mosuo Association, said: “there are now full of young people in the association, which is perfect. It is hard for old people to learn new techniques, but young people are quick learners. We old people can teach them our knowledge and techniques, but the future of the association relies on them”. (3) After receiving market orders, the project specifically added a training program on how to finish the market orders with good quality control and good time control. The villagers thereby had an actual experience in completing the orders from international markets and learned quite a lot of information concerning the modern marketing. (4) Along with the development of associations, new problems and difficulties emerged, which forced the administrators of the associations to look for proper solutions. For example, the head of Li Brocade Association proposed to use innovated handicraft products to create new market niches in order to avoid the competition with the existing Li brocade co-op led by Huang Huiqiong. (5) The construction of buildings for associations. Now the Huayao Dai
Association has its own building and a courtyard while the Li Brocade Association just recently moved in the newly constructed Culture Building, a beautiful three-floor-building.
3 Photo credits: http://www.ethnicngo.org/newsread.php?id=329
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The building of the Huayao Dai Association The Cultural Building of Li Brocade
Association
2.4 Output 2 - building marketing channels
The project had paid much attention to building marketing channels; for example, it especially hired experts to conduct market surveys for Li brocade in July 2012. Activities in this output were aimed to broaden the market niches for ethnic minority’s products and accelerate the protection and development of ethnic cultures. There had been two targets in this output: the international luxury market and the local tourist market.
The international luxury market was an important target for the associations’ products. Since
July 2012, the project had encouraged and organized villagers to prepare and apply for the
UNESCO Award of Excellence for Handcrafts (the final result is amazing: six products won the award). In October 2012, the project helped nine villagers from these associations to Mega
Exhibition in Hong Kong to exhibit and sell their products and get familiar with international marketing. In December 2012, the project supported the Li Brocade Association to participate in the Hainan Winter Exposition in Haikou City, during which the association networked and collected market information and met the suppliers of raw materials. In 2013, the project helped the associations get market orders, including the orders of 144 scarfs (about RMB 40,000 yuan) received by the Mosuo Association from the Singapore market and some other small orders received by Huayao Dai association from Germany and UN Women. During the process of completing these market orders, associations had improved their capacity in linking ethnic handcrafts to international markets. In August 2014, the Huayao Dai Association organized handicraft products and participated in the Yunnan Cultural Product Exhibition in Kunming.
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Photo: works finished in the workshop by villagers from the Li Brocade Association
The second key target for marketing was the tourist market. Supported by the project, Mosuo association set up a store in the Lugu Lake Museum, while Huayao Dai Association actively participated in the local tourism by setting up connections with the local government and received orders from different bureaus. Especially, as informed by the head of the association, the Huayao
Dai Association had a relatively systematic planning for its role in the local tourism development.
In Fanmao village, the Li Brocade Association had finished the construction of the Culture
Building, which was multi-functional (a place designed for purposes of management, production, selling, exhibition, training, as well as a potential tourism spot). Influenced by the project, Fanmao village also launched a campaign against the dirty and messy environment and over 1200 villagers worked together, which laid a foundation for the promotion of tourism in the village.
Photo: a retail outlet of Huayao Dai Association at Gasa Town
2.5 Output 3 - publicity
This output was aimed to publicize the project activities and ethnic minority cultures, help raise the public awareness of cultural diversity, help raise local people’s awareness of their ethnic identity and their pride on their traditional cultures, and help build a harmonious society.
In order to promote the construction of community associations and enrich people’s knowledge and experience in CDD, the project published two brochures: Handbook of Building
Community Organization and Handbook of Ethnic Minority Handcrafts and Handcraft
Associations , the latter had systematically demonstrated the representative handicrafts of ethnic minorities in China.
The project activities and pilot sites had been reported widely in the mass media in the
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country, including fashion magazines such as Marie Claire, ELLE, Modern Weekly, Cosmo Lady, and so on, newspapers such as China Youth, Wenhui Newspaper, China Daily, Southern Weekend and so on, and television programs such as CCTV, Shanghai Oriental TV Arts and Humanities
Channel, as well as popular web site media such as Sohu, Sina, and QQ, among others. In
December 2012, when Rebeca Grynspan, the deputy-head of UNDP, and Yang Fan, the director of
SEAC’s Office for Development Projects, investigated Pingzhai village and Huayao Dai
Association, their visit was quickly reported by the major media such as CCTV. Moreover, villagers’ life in Pingzhai became one episode of the series
One Day on Earth supported by
UNDP.
Both Mosuo and Li Brocade associations had plans on web-site construction, which, as estimated, could be put in use in late 2014.
Also, in the two pilot sites in Yunnan, there appeared a program called “putting local cultures into classrooms”, which helped the local kids to learn their traditional handicraft skills in the summer vacations.
For publicity, the Li Brocade Association had organized a series of activities, including a promotion of Li brocade products in Haikou city (for 3 days, December 2012), a contest of Li brocade design (for 20 days, December 2013), a promotion of advertising Li brocade products (for
30 days, May-June 2014), a contest of innovating Li brocade design and of designing symbols for the Li Brocade association (for 60 days, September - October 2014), and the association calling for Li brocade products (for 54 days, October - November 2014).
2.6 Follow-up arrangement
In order to strengthen the construction of community organizations and the capacity of association in management in these pilot sites, the project has applied for several positions of volunteers from the Xiaoying Project (funded by Youcheng Foundation). In August 2014, the first group of volunteers already arrived in Pingzhai village and would help the Huayao Dai
Association on business management and web-site construction. Also, the project planned to cooperate with the School of Fine Art in Qinghua University to hold a contest to find the best approaches in selling minorities’ cultural products, which had been described as “using students’ wisdom to help the linkage between minority’s handicrafts and markets”.
The provincial government of Yunnan has already combined the two pilot sites (Pingzhai and
Wenquan) into the provincial development programs, including the Tufeng (Local Traditions)
Project, the Superior Cultural Products Project, the Protection and Development of Villages with
Ethnic Characteristics Project , and the Model Villages in Ethnic Unity Project. The Gasa
Township government planned to hire well-known designers to teach a training workshop on behalf of the Huayao Dai Association. This township government also found a job position for
Dao Xiangmei, the deputy head of the Huayao Dai Association, in order to bring a reliable income to her and she could devote more time to the association management. For the development of the association, this township government also gave the order of school uniforms (in ethnic style) to
Huayao Dai Association.
Hainan provincial government had the project of Villages with Ethnic Characteristics and
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could support the Li Brocade Association. The Wuzhishan Municipal government help the Li
Brocade Association set up a fund of seed money. This municipal government is now carrying out a training program focusing on traditional skills and techniques and plans to hire some of the villagers from the association as lecturers (part time) for the workshops. Also, currently the Li
Brocade Association hires an advertising company to build a website for their products.
2.7 The overall effect
The selection of pilot sites had carefully considered the factors of the local society, economy, gender and ethnicity and balanced very well various requirements, including the geographical and social marginality, and the potentiality in development of ethnic cultural product for tourist market.
In this perspective, the three pilot sites all fit for these requirements. Pingzhai Village was located in the center of Huayao Dai culture and close to Gasa Town, a tourist spot under construction.
Wenquan village owned a hot spring and was close to Lugu Lake, an established tourist spot of
Mosuo culture. Fanmao village had a long history in producing Li brocade and was located in the suburb of Wuzhishan city, a well-known tourist city.
One feature of this project was the involvement and performance of women, who had been the major players in this project and participated in all activities. They could have their own thoughts and actively participated in the decision making by vote, which marked a great progress on women empowerment.
In improving capacity, the project hold a series of training workshops, which had been focused on organization construction, personnel management, financial management, innovating new products, constructing physical buildings and virtual platforms for information exchange.
Based on the field investigation, the author found villagers generally were satisfied with the association management, and especially with the financial management. These training workshops greatly assisted the associations in the following aspects: building community organizations, innovating new products, sample producing, quality control, cost and price calculation, and standardization in completing market orders. The innovating of new products had been striking:
Mosuo association had innovated 15 new scarfs/blanket and the Huayao Dai association 100 new products. In sum, through the project, all associations had improved their capacity in innovating new products, marketing, and protecting cultural traditions.
Linking products to market and the income: the project helped the market survey for associations and helped build the market channels, including setting up retail outlets in the tourist spots. The project also helped the associations to get market orders from international markets.
There has been an obvious increasing in villagers’ income: the orders from Singapore brought nearly 40,000 yuan to the Mosuo association. In 2012, the Huayao Dai Association received four orders (including 400 pillows, 500 briefcases, and 100 costumes) and a total income of 47,200 yuan. From 2012 to 2014, the Huayao Dai Association had an income of 250,000 yuan and the villagers with good handcraft skill could have an income of 2000-3000 yuan monthly.
For publicity, the project took advantage of various kinds of mass media (magazine,
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newspaper, TV, radio, website, and brochure) to popularize these ethnic minority cultural products.
The sustainable development of traditional cultures: during the project, the associations keep growing. The Huayao Dai Association had accepted 50-60 new members in recent two years and the total number of members reached 389, while many people from other villages expressed their strong interest in joining the association. In Wenquan village, 60 out of 80 households already joined in the Mosuo association. Even though there were difficulties in all associations, the protection of cultural heritage had stepped into a new stage: from the static protection (i.e., identifying several representatives) to the dynamic protection (with many villagers’ participation) and, moreover, certain cultural heritage has been revived and become parts of local people’s alternative livelihood.
During the process of project implementation, the partnership had been reinforced and improved: the exchange channels were easy and effective, and all partners had leaders make field visits to the pilot sites. For example, in March 2012, Mr Zheng Chunying, CEO of Jala Group, visited the Li community; in May 2012, Mr Yang Jianqiang, the vice-director of SEAC visited
Mosuo and Huayao Dai communities; in December 2012, the deputy head of UNDP visited
Huayao Dai community. With the joining of Jala Group, the culture-based development moved into a new phase too, which has started to integrate the resources from both official and private sectors.
Overall, the site selection, the implementation of project activities, the effects, the effectiveness, the monitoring of the project, and the follow-up arrangement have been successful and appropriate and the project has brought positive impacts on different aspects (i.e., on policy, on ethnic minorities’ pride on their traditional cultures, and so on)
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3.1 On traditional handicrafts
Through the project, the traditional handcraft products, together with the related cultural meanings, symbolic values and artistic values, begin to enter the international accreditation system, which had laid a good foundation for their way to the international luxury market. As early as July
2012, the project already organized pilot sites to prepare for the competition for the UNESCO
Award of Excellence for Handcraft and in September 2013 a training program specifically focusing on the six major requirements (excellence, authenticity, innovation, marketability, eco-friendiness, social responsibility) of this award was carried out in Chuxiong, Yunnan. Totally
106 works from countries like China, Mongolia, and Korea had been sent to this competition and the final result was amazing: among the 40 works which won the award, 6 were from the pilot sites, including 4 scarfs made by Mosuo villagers and 2 tablewares made by Huayao Dai villagers.
All these works were finished by villagers under the instruction of Joseph Lo, who had once been very busy with villagers on innovating the designing, selecting raw materials, processing techniques, and packaging. These international awards have become one of the most important outcomes of the development approach applied in this project, namely integrating the protection of ethnic cultures into development.
Mr Zhou Weidong remembered that the Huayao Dai Association had tried in the last competition of this UNESCO award and failed in the vote of the final round. However, the association never gave up and it finally succeeded this year.
Dao Xiangmei, the vice chair of Huayao Dai association, highly praised the training workshops organized by the project, which had improved villagers’ skills and broadened their horizons. In the village, people had long limited their design to several traditional ones and had kept the idea that red plus green were the most beautiful color combination. But after the training workshops, villagers learned how to combine the traditional with the requirements from modern markets. The innovated handicrafts now even attracted several university students, who came to the village to study.
The chair of Mosuo association felt grateful to the project, who said: “the workshops on dyeing and innovating design are quite good, because they make it hard for machines to finish a similar product and then we get new chances (to create a market niche)”.
Members from the Li Brocade association thought the project had influenced their handicraft heavily, as one lady said: “We might keep making our Li brocade if there were no such a project, but our products would remain less famous. The project helped publicize our products widely and now even the top leaders from the national congress and provincial government came to visit our association. We are now proud of our new brocade products since the local newly weds asked us for some new products, which have become something that can bring “face” to them in the wedding ceremonies.”
What’s more, with the innovated techniques, villagers know how to use eco-friendly materials to make products that fit for the requirements from international markets and the standards set up by international organizations.
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3.2 Impacts on policy and government’s decision making
An official from the Ethnic and Religious Affairs Bureau of Wuzhishan Municipality had compared the current Fanmao village with its history, who said that in the past the villagers were totally in a state of disunity, a sheet of loose sand, but after the project, they have been integrated into the association. In his eyes, this should be the most successful outcome of the project. Setting up handicraft associations not only gave rise to the situation of “letting investment come to contact me”, but also helped build a platform for information exchange and set up rules to avoid the bad competition between fellow villagers. The project let us know that with proper support villagers were able to cooperate effectively: “some villagers are responsible for production, some for designing, and some for marketing”. Community association leads villagers to become rich together and leads to sustainable development, a phenomenon that has now attracted the attention of the Chinese governments at different levels.
According to Zhou Weidong, this CDD approach has exerted positive impacts on policy-makers such as SEAC, the Development Research Center of the State Council and the
Yunnan Provincial Government, who have confirmed the significance of this approach in community development. The development model is now under the transition from government’s running the whole development program to the villagers’ dominance of the whole program. This approach can help a development project to leave a sustainable organization and certain norms/values and institution to the local community when the project is over.
One official from the Ethnic Affairs Commission of Yunnan Province said: “the culture-based model of development is better than our old model, which has now been integrated into our new development projects. This approach is better not because it can bring more money, rather it helps teach local villagers how to take charge of their own development. The old approach sounds like a
“pure blood-transfusion” (without “blood-making”). For example, years ago, Shanghai government donated 500,000 yuan to a village in Yunnan and we also matched another 200,000 yuan. With the total 700,000 yuan, we hired a construction team to build roads, cattle sheds and pig sties and bio-gas pools; we also bought cattle and pigs for villagers. We felt that everything were perfectly prepared for them. However, just in two years, we were surprised to find that the sheds and sties were empty and there was no bio-gas in the pools either. The fast failure made us frustrated and we realized that development projects did need the participation of villagers and the projects should really become theirs rather than ours. So the construction of villagers’ community organization (like the culture-based model did) did turn out very important as it was essential to the self-management of their own development affairs. At the same time, we also found it was useful to improve villagers’ skills and knowledge. Therefore, in our provincial Twelfth Five Year
Planning, we have added a part of “quality improving” to it, which is aimed to improve people’s quality (skills and knowledge), including both adults and children”.
Rebeca Grynspan, the vice chair of UNDP, highly praised the achievement made by the project when she investigated the Huayao Dai community, who said that this project had successfully made the policies of the state, the provincial and the county governments connected;
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the successful experiences in constructing community organizations have been upgraded to the policy making at the national level and influenced the policy making.
3.3 Impacts on ethnic minorities’ culture
In fact, all the activities of the three outputs had assisted the publicity of ethnic cultures and cultural diversity among the public, increased the ethnic minorities’ pride on their cultures and promoted the protection of cultural heritage. Among the three pilot sites, the reviving and innovating of traditional handcrafts not only bring extra income to the villagers, but also bring pride and new expectation of their culture and life, as some villagers put: “(the project) helps us to get income during the slack farming season and we can make a living with our traditional culture.”
The chair of the Huayao Dai Association said: “we Huayao Dai people were called baiyi by outsiders in the past, which was a derogatory term looking down upon us and meant self-willed, untamed or uncivilized people. Surprisingly, this project paid much attention to our culture and made us feel that our culture was important. Our traditional culture become something of value, so our villagers searched these old stuff from chests and cupboards. We changed our mind and know that these old stuffs need to be protected and moreover, we want to know how to protect them effectively. I think we can do something to have more young people to like these traditional cultures. My village has a population of 600 people and more than 400 are working in outside cities now; especially, most young people (from 18 to 45) live and work outside village. As a matter of fact, people don’t want to leave the village and wish there were jobs nearby at home. If most of us could work at home, we did not need to worry about our families and we could have a better psychological health. Now we just hope the handicraft association can develop smoothly and then our dream of working at home may come true.”
Dao Xiangmei had been one of the young people who were influenced by the project and returned to the village. She resigned from a trademark company in a city and gave up a monthly salary of more than 2000 yuan in 2009; now she devotes herself to the traditional weaving and embroidery. Because of her interests in innovating cultural traditions, she was elected as the vice chair of the handcraft association in 2012. From then on, she became extremely busy, but she felt proud that the association could get the villagers together to protect and develop their traditional cultures and each villager had the opportunity to achieve her/his personal value.
4
In the Mosuo community, influenced by the project, there now appeared several successors of cultural heritage, covering areas from traditional textile to oral cultures. One official of Yunnan provincial government said that in the past the ethnic minority communities did not know they possessed cultural resources, let alone knowing how to protect them. Now the UNDP project deepened local people’s understanding of their traditional cultures and brought pride to them. Each ethnic group knew their own cultural heritages and had a number of people who were enthusiastic in protecting it. Also influenced by the UNDP project and the CDD approach in development,
4 Making a living by keeping traditional culture: investigating the development of embroidery in Xinping
(http://www.yuxi.cn
，
2014-1-5)
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Yunnan provincial government launches the project “Villages with Ethnic Characteristics (VEC)”.
“With the VEC project, we want to let villagers dominant their development affairs and also highlight the importance of cultural diversity”, as one official put.
Members of the Li Brocade Association confirmed that the project greatly reinforced their pride on their traditional cultures. For one thing, their brocade products became a valuable gift used for local wedding ceremony besides bring women more “pocket money” (income). One official from Wuzhishan municipal government said: “in the past for the cultural heritage protection the government just focused on protection (limited to identifying protected sites or identifying several heritage successors) and seldom engaged in innovating and creating market niches for it. This project fills this vacancy timely and also successfully arouse the enthusiasm of villagers.”
3.4 Impacts on the village community
The project activities had helped these pilot sites get certain market orders which subsequently brought benefits to the associations and villagers as well. Influenced by the project, villagers had broadened their horizons and received new information including the principle and ideas about international marketing. On the other side, this project also positively influenced the rural communities in China, which have been undergoing a rapid depopulation nationwide as most young people choose to leave the village and to make a living in cities. The state government has taken a series of measures to counteract this tendency, including movements of the New
Countryside Construction, the Villages with Characteristics, and so on. For counteracting the rural depopulation, the essential issue was how to attract young people to return to their villages.
Therefore, the most important things turned out to be reliable job and income, and a life style and culture in which young people would have interest. Fortunately, this project is making an important contribution to this issue as in all pilot sites more and more young people are attracted by the association and potential jobs. During the field studies of this evaluation, the author observed and interviewed quite a lot of young people in the villages.The Huayao Dai association was actually first set up by a group of young people, who were led by Dao Yuanyue (the first chair of this association) and now this association was full of young people, such as Dao Xiangmei, Bai
Wanmei, Dao Chunyan, to name just a few. Especially, in the mass media, Dao Xiangmei was described as “the young watcher of traditional cultures”. In Mosuo community, I met several young people who were enthusiastic in the association and handcraft skills. I also met a number of young people, including Huang Licai, the current chair of the Li Brocade Association, who resigned from a job in city and returned to the village years ago when the project was started.
The project also impacted the landscape and hygienic condition of villages. Both the Huayao
Dai association and the Li Brocade association now own a beautiful building, which decorates the local landscape and serves as a public space for all villagers. As an observer of this big change,
Zhou Weidong said that the site of Huayao Dai association building used to be a dirty wasteland and before the implementation of this project these villages had problems in hygiene, such as the
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unseparated living space of human and livestock and the environment generally was dirty and messy. Zhou said that the project made a big difference in this aspect.
3.5 Impacts on women
In this project, the degree of women’s participation had been very high. Eighty percent of the women in Wenquan village had joined the Mosuo association while in Pingzhai village, the percentage is 83 percent. In Fanmao village, except for one member, all the rest members of the Li
Brocade association were women. The project had influenced women greatly. The founder of
Huayao Dai association was a young lady, Dao Yuanyue, while the current vice chair was another young lady Dao Xiangmei who was taking charge of many affairs of this association. Because of the contributions made by Dao Xiangmei to the association and village, she was elected to be a representative of the county congress and the municipal (prefecture level) congress. Influenced by the project, now most middle-aged women in the village liked to stay at home to work on brocade and embroidery and roughly half of the young women had or showed interest in staying at home and learning the traditional skills. In Mosuo community, it has been customary for the eldest daughter of a family to stay at home and run the whole family, so quite many young women showed enthusiasm in this project and hoped it could help them to make enough money (as much as that earned in cities) while living at village. Several women of the Li Brocade association said, with joy, that the project had helped them to earn more pocket money since in the leisure season of the year they could work on brocade and embroidery, especially the small items like hand bags or mouse cushions made of Li brocade had enjoyed a good market recently, and each year one woman could earn 6000 to 7000 yuan on average.
One lady of the Li Brocade association said that due to the training programs run by the project, she became skillful in textile weaving and was hired as a part-time lecturer by a local technique college and also invited by other township governments to teach the class (workshop) of traditional skills.
One woman from Enshi, Hubei, who participated in the training workshops in Beijing and
Xinjiang said that the workshop instructors helped her on making small pieces of brocade and small items; then her production became more effective and got more income and now could pay more money to her employees. Another beneficiary from Enshi said she had long wanted to design a hand bag made of traditional Xilankapu brocade and this finally came true when she participated in the workshop run by the project. Also, she mentioned, as trainees of the workshop came from different areas or different ethnic groups, the workshop helped them to exchange information.
These information was so useful that she hoped this kind of exchanging could be continued and wondered if some virtual platforms like website could be constructed for them.
These changes happened on women throughout the project had also been observed by the project officials. One project official said that in the early time of the project, these women were generally shy and it was unlike for them to participate in the training programs, who regarded the workshop as something wasting their time. Some even asked for payment if they went to the
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workshops. Now they became different, who struggled to get the positions in workshops. Their identity awareness as an ethnic community member, as an association member, as a carrier of cultural heritage had become very strong. Now when they meet visitors or outsiders, they are no longer shy, but appear to be grace and easy and with self-confidence.
Overall, this project took the traditional handcraft as an entrance and successfully satisfies the requirements of MDGs, such as “poverty alleviation with cultural industry”, integrating culture into development, and women empowerment, and had exerted positive impacts on development policy, cultural heritage protection, rural community maintenance, increasing income and poverty alleviation and women empowerment. It is also a fruitful exploration of the new partnership between official development agencies and private enterprises.
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4.1 The fragility of associations and sustainable development
Many interviewees during the evaluation, including villagers, experts employed by the project for the training workshops, and government officials , thought it was not easy to make such achievements through the project and hopes there would be enough follow-up measures to ensure that the pilot sites could continue and could achieve a sustainable development finally. As a whole, the three associations are in the early stage of development and fragile. They all face certain problems and constraints, such as the lack of seed money, innovated products, and market orders, besides the conflicts between the pioneers in handicraft industry and the newly established association, the unsatisfied platform for information exchange (i.e., no effective websites, or that sometimes only part of the association members knew the information of newly received market orders), the election of association leaders may be controlled or influenced by the powerful lineages in the local community, the fact that most young people keep searching jobs in cities, the lack of time-awareness among the villagers who thought weaving and embroidering were not considered real work, and so on.
(1) Currently, the two most pressing problems that influenced the development of associations are innovated products and searching for market orders. Both Huayao Dai and Li associations mentioned the problem of the lack of innovated handcraft products. The Li association needs the new products to create a new market niche so that the association can avoid competing the similar market niches with these pioneers in the Li brocade industry. Huayao Dai association was lucky in this aspect as the local township government already promised to hire well-known designers for the workshop. People from the Mosuo community were actually the pioneers in marketing their traditional handcrafts such as scarfs and capes, but in recent years the machine-made “Mosuo” scarfs and capes by outside businessmen took all their market niches away with a considerable lower price. During the project, designers such as Joseph Lo helped the
Mosuo innovated their products that made it hard for machines to imitate. However, the Mosuo association currently desperately needs market orders to start the production. The chair of the association said: “we cannot start the production, because without market orders we cannot afford to overstock”. Also, the chair of the Li Brocade association said that she was under pressure since the association members kept asking her why so far they had not started production.
(2) How to deal with the complex relationship between the pioneers in handicraft industry, the lineage structure in the local community, and the newly established associations. Because of the potential conflicts between the pioneers and the new association, one pioneer of Li brocade already withdrew from the association, while another pioneer who still kept her membership of the association worried about the potential conflicts between the association and her interests.
Similarly, in the Mosuo association, Aqi Duzhima, the pioneer in Mosuo textile and the founding
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chair of the Mosuo association, withdrew from the association. These pioneers are credited with keeping heritages/traditional skills in the early years and with creating a market niche in recent years. Therefore, this phenomenon and the question that how to integrate the development of the association with that of the pioneers deserve serious considerations. Another factor that also influences the association is the local lineage structure within an ethnic group.
(3) Villagers’ capacity in completing market orders. During the process of the project, the associations began to meet new problems, especially the management of market orders. All associations already showed their weaknesses in the quality control and time control in production.
As told by several observers of this problem, the lack of experience was one of the reasons and there were also cultural reasons. For example, most villagers got used to the traditional rural life style and it was hard for them to keep the sense of time as frequently emphasized by the modern markets. Dao Xiangmei, the vice chair of Huayao Dai association, said that she worried more about how to finish the production by the deadlines than searching for market orders. In her community, none of the villagers regarded embroidery as a major work,who thought that embroidery could only be done in the slack farming season. This kind of attitude of villagers had greatly prolonged the time of completing a market order. Another reason for the order problem came from the large number of products, since modern market orders usually ask for a very big number of items of a product, which would be too big for one association to complete in a relatively short period of time. The chair of Huayao Dai association had once turned down such a big order, who said that “it was obviously beyond our capability”.
(4) How to attract young people. The Mosuo community now does have many young people who stay at the village, as the Mosuo custom requires the eldest daughter to stay at home and take charge of the whole family/household. However, both Huayao Dai and Li community face the problem of young people’s participation. Dao Xiangmei thought that it usually took 2 to 3 years for one to learn the traditional handcraft skills, which eventually intimidated certain young people.
Currently the middle-aged and senior women form the main work force in the associations, who cannot work as fast as young people however, and this has been another reason account for the difficulty in completing orders. With many young people working in cities, the transmission of cultural heritage will become difficult, which is another big issue.
Recommendations: (1) Take advantage of all possible resources to help the associations search for market orders and help tide them over the difficult in the early stage of development.
Also, as suggested, the local annual festivals (i.e., Mosuo’s mountain pilgrimage festival, Huayao
Dai’s Huajie festival, and Li people’s Sanyuesan festival) can be considered a good market for villagers’ products. Villagers can use their leisure time to make products and then sell them during these festivals. (2) Help the associations to get funds for employing designers. (3) Help the associations to have more seed money. (4) Help the associations construct a website, which can serve as a virtual space/platform for different communities to exchange experience and information (i.e., information of designers, techniques, market and so on). (5) Help associations perfect their organization construction and rules, and ensure that certain essential regulations (such
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as publicizing the budget and financial information) will be institutionalized in the association.
Pay attention to the dynamic relations between the growth of associations, the pioneers of local handcraft, and the local lineage structure. (6) Pay attention to young people and schools
(especially colleges/universities). Schools are the places where young people live and study together, who will be the future of the associations. Currently, the Xiaoying Project supported by
Youcheng Foundation provides a good opportunity for the associations to use the resources of young volunteers.
4.2 Training style
Villagers said it was good to change the training method from “listening before practicing” to
“listening while practicing”. However, certain training programs were still focused on lecturing of theories, which took the most time of the trainees (villagers) and had made most villagers hard to understand and they did not how to put the theory into practice in the end.
Both association leaders and local officials suggested have more training workshops in the village rather than sending villagers to outside workshops, because the latter needed more money and only the several lucky villagers could get the chances to go. Some local officials worried that the expenses for workshops would become a big problem in the future. Several villagers also suggested that invite local experts as instructors for these workshops due to the limited budget.
Villagers also wished the duration of a workshop could be longer. The period of a training workshop usually lasted for several days. Joseph Lo, a designer hired by the project to train villagers, said that the longer the period the better the result. Just like the fieldwork’s influence on anthropologists, a longer period of workshop will help the instructor to get familiar with the trainees’ culture. Better understanding of the trainees’ culture can help the interaction between the trainer and the trainees. Joseph mentioned that villagers only considered working in the farmland the real work and regarded the weaving and embroidery as a way of killing time in the slack farming season. Therefore, knowing this cultural background, the trainers may need spend some time on discussing with the villagers about the the relationship between culture and value (in which cultures weaving and embroidery are considered important work, and why they are not considered important in your culture)
Recommendation: construct a database of experts (international, national and local experts), which will bring convenience to organizations or governments who want to hire experts for training workshops. Combine sending villagers out and inviting experts into the village. Extend the duration of training workshops.
4.3 Intellectual property
It was the Mosuo women who kept the Mosuo traditional textile and created a market niche.
Today there are many stores selling Mosuo textile in the famous tourist sites like Lijiang and Lugu
Lake. However, most Mosuo textile sold on the market today are not made by Mosuo women but by machines in the factories in other parts of China (it was said mainly in Yiwu, Zhejiang
25

province). Machines took the market of Mosuo textile away from Mosuo women and, for Mosuo people, this change is destructive. Therefore, it is an urgent issue requiring the involvement of scholars/experts on intellectual property rights, who can help to add a legal consideration of the protection of the heritage, interests, and authenticity of Mosuo people and their products.
For trademark registration, the Huayao Dai association has registered one trademark
( Qiaohuayao ) and is preparing for the application for the second trademark. But, neither Mosuo association nor Li Brocade association has registered anything yet.
Villagers in Li association also wondered if their registration of any trademark for the Li brocade products would give rise to controversy as they thought that Li brocade products generally should belong to all Li people/communities.
Recommendation: experts on the intellectual property rights should be hired to conduct an in-depth research on the issues.
4.4 Market orientations of handcraft products
Several stakeholders mentioned a similar problem in marketing ethnic handcraft products, namely the market orientations for handcraft products, since different orientations implies different strategies on designing, producing, pricing, marketing and advertising. During the project, many people felt that the ethnic minority handcraft products had various market orientations
(shifting orientation) as common daily necessities, tourist souvenirs, artifacts, or luxuries. The shifting orientation made it especially hard for the designers to balance the requirements from traditional designing and modern designing. Officials from Xinping County already realized this problem, who said that there had appeared disconnections between designing and market requirements and the contemporary consumers have different attitudes toward handcraft products, as some want the traditional designs and others want more innovated designs. One official from
Yunnan Provincial Ethnic Commission thought that handcraft should avoid mass production as each product was unique, which contained the producer’s special skills and creativity. One official from Beijing said that different market orientations were okay but for current stage,“daily necessities” should be the proper choice, while tourist souvenirs belonged to the next step;
Artifacts should belong to the long-range planning as they were luxuries, which should be attached with a card of cultural statement, illustrating meanings and background of this product.
Recommendation: Each association should organize meetings to discuss this market orientation issue and reach an agreement, which will help the designing, producing, pricing, marketing and advertising. Also, pay attention the tiny card of cultural statement attached to products.
4.5 Cooperation
The cooperation mechanism between project partners had been highly effective so far. It can be further improved if attention can be paid to certain minor problems, including the mutual adjustment of their goals in the project, the punctuality of allocating project fund, and the
26

adjustment of requirement on documentary format for project reports.
The handcraft industry should cooperate with other related industries, such as ethnic tourism, cultural tourism, agricultural heritage, and the farmhouse-joy movement ( nongjiale ) and so on. As mentioned by the chair of Huayao Dai Association during the field research, one businessman was deeply attracted by the food culture of Huayao Dai and wanted to invest on it. The chair thought food culture could influence more customers and investors than handcrafts did, and the development of food resources could help the development of handcraft 5 . Similarly, an official from Xinping county government believed that only when the rural tourism of Huayao Dai took off could the handcraft industry make a bigger progress.
Set up more cooperations between the development industry and the academic circle. The development and transmission of handcraft are systematic and multi-dimensional, which are not limited to just technique/skill or marketing. There are many other aspects of the handcraft which need explorations, for example, how many local plants have been used by local people in spinning, weaving, and dyeing, and how many traditional designs have been kept and what are the meanings of them. These aspects of the traditional handcrafts have long been studies by scholars from anthropology, ethnology, ethnobotany, folklore and law, and their research results can be referenced for the culture-based development projects. What’s more, the scholarly studies can help the project on the publicity, potential cultural resources, stakeholders’ cultural sensitivity, the local beneficiaries’ pride of their culture, and the legal rights of minoroties’ intellectual properties. More cooperations with the academic circle can get more intellectual resources and bring more ideas and methods to the development projects.
Set up cooperation between different associations. In Fanmao village, the local Li people belong to the Qi branch, but in one of their exhibition rooms they also displayed the brocade products of other Li branches. Dao Xiangmei from the Huayao Dai association once suggested display handcraft products made by other ethnic groups, such as the Mosuo products and Tujia’s brocade, at the Huayao Dai retail outlet in Gasa town, which, however, had not received enough attention yet.
Recommendation: (1) All partners of the project can pay more attention to these minor problems, such as the time of allocating funds and the standardization of project report formats and so on. (2) have more cooperation and interactions with scholars. (3) have more cooperation between different associations.
4.6 Publicity
For the project publicity, there are several areas which can be improved. (1) The publicity, which had been very helpful, was largely concentrated in the early period of the project. When
5 Mr Dao Jinghui, chair of the Huayao Dai association, thought a comprehensive rural tourism could help the development of handicrafts. He suggested that build an original ecological swimming pool (as Pingzhai village had a warm weather and good quality waters) and a participant farm. These two sites could be connected by a street.
One side of the street would be restaurants of local farmer’s foods while the other stores selling local special products including the handicrafts.
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that time period was over, there were less and less reports about the project activities. (2) By the time of the evaluation, none of the three associations had finished their website construction.
Huayao Dai association once had a website but was suspended due to the domain name costs. Li
Brocade association and Mosuo association claimed that their websites were still under construction. One interviewee from Enshi (Hubei) said that handicraft workers like her actually needed a website desperately. (3) Several interviewees from Fanmao village (Hainan) and Enshi
(Hubei) pointed out that more endeavors in publicity were needed to increase the awareness and knowledge of minorities’ handcraft in the whole society (especially among the youth). It was essential to let young people know that this industry was valuable and could bring a good income to them. These interviewees also hoped the local government and the project could pay attention to these “minor” handcrafts, which were also culturally embedded. (4) Several women wondered if the project could help them and their handcraft products get linked to the oversea markets.
Recommendation: (1) Suggest the project organize associations to construct and maintain a joint website, a shared comprehensive public space on which different associations and ethnic groups can share each other’s cultures and exchange their experience, design, techniques, and market information. (2) Cooperate with the government’s Youth League and Education bureaus to integrate the cultural knowledge of ethnic handicraft into the elementary and middle schools’ curricula.
4.7 The project site in Hubei
The project proposal had one section about the outputs and related activities in Yichang and
Enshi, Hubei province. In the following baseline surveys in Hubei, participated by all partners including the fund donor, investigators found that Hubei was lack of the basis for CDD and then they reached an agreement that no pilot site would be selected from Hubei, but Hubei could send villagers to the training workshops run by the project. During the project, several Hubei villagers went to Beijing and Xinjiang for these workshops. During the phone interviews, two interviewees from Enshi highly praised these workshops and strongly suggested that similar workshops be hold in Enshi as they estimated that there were over 200 local handicraft workers who were interested in taking this kind of training program.
Recommendation: Enshi belongs to the home area where local Tujia people have kept the long tradition of making Xilankapu brocade. If in the future a similar project can select Enshi villages as pilot sites, the impacts will be great.
4.8 The duration of the project
All interviewees in the Huayao Dai association thought it would be better if the project could be extended for another half to one year. Most interviewees in the Li Brocade association wished the project could be extended for another two years.
Recommendation: hope there will be the project phase two.
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United Nations Development Program Sub-Project on Protection and Development of Ethnic
Minority Handcrafts under Culture-based Development for Ethnic Minorities in China Program
Field Survey Report -- Sub-Project on Protection and Development of Li-Brocade in Hainan
Province under Culture-based Development for Ethnic Minorities in China Program (Zhou
Weidong, 2012-2)
Field Mission Report -- Sub-Project on Protection and Development of Ethnic Minority
Handcrafts under Culture-based Development for Ethnic Minorities in China Program (Zhou
Weidong, 2012-5)
Annual Project Progress Report -- Sustainable Ethnic Minorities Cultural Industry
Development （ 2013-3-15 ）
Annual Project Progress Report -- Sustainable Ethnic Minorities Cultural Industry
Development （ 2014-3-20 ）
Annual Project Progress Report -- Sub-Project on Protection and Development of Li-Brocade in Wuzhishan, Hainan （ 2013-1-15 ）
Annual Project Progress Report -- Sub-Project on Protection and Development of Li-Brocade in Wuzhishan, Hainan （ 2013-12-20 ）
Ethnic Minority Handcrafts Brochure (UNDP China, SEAC, CICETE)
The Community Organizations Development Handbook (UNDP China, SEAC, CICETE)
Business Development Report Training Workshop Beijing (Joseph Lo, 2012-9)
Weaving Workshop Report (Joseph Lo, 2012-10)
Mission Report (Joseph Lo, 2012-5)
Natural Dye Training Workshop Report (Joseph Lo, 2012-4)
Travel Mission Report (Wu Peng, Pei Hongye, 2011-6)
Travel Mission Report (Pei Hongye, 2011-5)
New Approaches in social development in Ethnic Minority areas: Community dominated and turning handcrafts into economic benefits （ CCTV-13 News Chanel ， 2012-12-22 ）
Nima’s Spring （ CCTV-10 Science and Education Channel ， 2011-10-10 ）
Weaving Out of Poverty （ UNDP, http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzU0ODMzMjU2.html
）
Aqi’s dream （ http://v.pps.tv/play_31Q255.html
， 2012-9-25 ）
Mosuo Tradition - Textile - breaking out （ Lijiang TV Station ， 2013-8-27 ）
Mosuo - a place better than North Europe （ ELLE ， 2011-10 ）
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Going deep into Mosuo culture （ Urban Beauty, vol. 138, 2011-11 ）
Two stories of Aqi （ Pinwei Magazine, 2011-11 ）
Spring of the Mosuo weaving lady （ www.ynxxb.com, 2012-9-18)
Aqi Duzhima: the lady who help revive Mosuo’s traditional textile techniques
（ www.sohu.com, 2011-8-31 ）
The current situation of Mosuo handcraft: Aqi’s defense （ www.sohu.com,2011-9-15 ）
Aqi: the successor of Mosuo intangible cultural heritage （ www.sohu.com,2011-12-2 ）
Aqi who is weaving the future （ www.sohu.com,2012-5-6 ）
Concerning Mosuo’s traditional textile an dsearch for alternative livelihoods
（ http://roll.sohu.com
， 2012-10-10 ）
Young guard of the traditional cultur: Dao Xiangmei （ http://es.yuxinews.com
， 2014-2-11 ）
Making a living by keeping traditional culture: exploring the development of embroidery in
Xinping （ http://www.yuxi.cn
， 2014-1-5 ）
Two products of Huayao Dai in Xinping received international wards
（ http://finance.ifeng.com
， 2014-8-27 ）
The happy embroidery of Huayao Dai （ http://news.hexun.com
， 2012-12-23 ）
The investigation team of Sustainable Ethnic Minorities Cultural Industry Development
Project conduct researches in Wuzhishan （ www.hainan.gov.cn
， 2012-2-14 ）
UNDP supports the Li Brocade program （ www.hainan.gov.cn
， 2012-4-1 ）
Women sustain the Li brocade industry in Fanmao village （ www.hq.xinhuanet.com
，
2014-5-6 ）
China: Mosuo women artisans reach world market （ http://www.undp.org
）
Weaving Tradition and Innovation into Poverty Reduction （ http://www.cn.undp.org
）
Six products received the UNESCO Award of Excellence for Handcrafts
( http://www.ethnicngo.org/newsread.php?id=330, 2014-8-5)
Yang Jiangqiang conducts researches on the project on comprehensive poverty alleviation in
Lijiang （ http://www.ljs.gov.cn/news/article/2012-05/15/content_54781.htm
）
SEAC investigation team conducts researches on the UNDP project in Gasa town, XInping county （ http://www.seac.gov.cn/art/2012/5/16/art_32_155131.html
）
The Huayao Dai Handcrafts Association of Xinping County, Yunnan (Pingzhai village)
The Mosuo Handcrafts Associationof Ninglang County, Yunnan (Walabi, Wenquan village)
The Li Brocade Development Association of Wuzhishan, Hainan (Fanmao village)
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
State Ethnic Affairs Commission of the People’s Republic of China(SEAC)
China International Center for economic and Technical Exchange (CICETE)
The Jala Group
The Ethnic Affairs Commission of Yunnan Province
30

The Ethnic and Religious Affairs Bureau of Xinping County, Yunnan The Ethnic and
Religious Affairs Bureau of Ninglang County, Yunnan
The Ethnic and Religious Affairs Bureau of Wuzhishan Municipality, Hainan
The Huayao Dai Handcrafts Association of Xinping County, Yunnan (Pingzhai village)
The Mosuo Handcrafts Associationof Ninglang County, Yunnan (Walabi, Wenquan village)
The Li Brocade Development Association of Wuzhishan, Hainan (Fanmao village)
1) What is the best thing about this project?
2) Do you have any success stroy to describe about this project?
3) What skills or experiences have you got through participating in this project?
4) What lessons you have learned in this project? If you could have changed something during the project to make it more effective what would it be?
5) Have the activities in your output made any contribution to the culture-based development?
6) What is culture? How can cultural sensitivity be improved ？
7) How is women’s performance in the project?
8) which experiences from the project are useful to governments? Based on the project, which policies of the government may be changed?
9) Is the project short of fund? Should the duration of the project be extended?
Date Activity
5 Aug
6 Aug
7 Aug
8 Aug
15:00-17:00 Meeting with partners
Gu Qing (UNDP), Yue Yangqi (UNDP)
7:00-12:20 Shanghai - Beijing
14:30-17:00 Meeting with partners
Yu Shuo (SEAC), Zhang Xia (SEAC), Li Liping (UNDP), Yang Fan (SEAC)
14:00–16:30 Meeting with partners
Zhang Jing (CICETE)
8:20–11:45 Beijing - Kunming
13:00-15:00 Meeting with partners in Provincial Ethnic Affairs Commission of Yunnan:
Chen Xinhua, Tai Xianjun
Remarks
At Shanghai
Marriott Hotel
At SEAC
At CICETE
At Ethnic Affairs
Commission of
Yunnan Province
31

9 Aug
10 Aug
11 Aug
12 Aug
13 Aug
14 Aug
AM: Kunming - Xinping - Gasa Township
PM: Pilot site visit
Meet local beneficiaries/villagers of Pingzhai village, Gasa Township:
Dao Yuanyue, Dao Jinghui, Bai Wanmei, Dao Chunyan
9:00-12:00: Meet local beneficiaries/members of the Handcraft association of Pingzhai Village:
Dao Jinghui, Bai Wanmei, Dao Chunyan, Dao Zhixing, Dao Zhiying, Dao
Jianfen, Li, Bai Yuanying
PM: Gasa Town - Xinping county seat
AM: Meeting with partners in the Ethnic & Religious Affairs Bureau of
Xinping County , Yunnan:
Zhang Jun (Director), Li Wenxiang, Ma Taiquan (vice director)
12:00-14:00 pm meeting with beneficiary ： Dao Xiangmei (vice chair of
Huayao Dai Association)
PM: Xinping - Kunming
8:25-9:20 Kunming - Lijiang
9:30-17:00 Lijiang - Ninglang
18:00-20:00 Meeting with partners in the Ethnic & Religious Affairs Bureau of Ninglang County, Yunnan:
Yang Zhihua (director), Yang Jingwen
AM: Meeting with partners in County Ethnic & Religious Affairs
Commission of Ninglang, Yunnan:
Yang Jingwen
AM: Ninglang - Wenquan village
PM: Pilot site visit meeting with stakeholders & beneficiaries at Wenquan Mosuo village,
Ninglang county:
Wengchong Gaoru, Yang Xiaoguang, Cier Yiru, Aqi Eryouma, Jiru Lacu,
Lamu, Ciding Zhuoma, Buma
AM: Stakeholders & beneficiaries meeting at Wenquan Mosuo village,
Ninglang county:
At Gasa Town
At Huayao Dai
Association,
Pingzhai Village,
Xinping County,
Yunnan
At ERAB of
Xinping County
At a restaurant
In Xinping
At ERAB of
Ninglang County
At ERAB of
Ninglang County
At Wenquan
Mosuo village
At Wequan
Mosuo village
32

15 Aug
16 Aug
17 Aug
18 Aug
Aqi Duzhima
PM: Mosuo village - Lijiang city
8:45 - 9:35 Lijiang -Kunming
13:00 - 15:00 Kunming - Sanya (Hainan province)
16:00-18:30 Sanya - Wuzhishan city
AM: meet stakeholders & beneficiaries of Wuzhishan county
Wang Rong (ERAB of Wuzhishan municipality)
PM: Pilot site visit - Li Brocade association, Fanmao village, Wuzhishan
Meet stakeholders & beneficiaries of Fanmao village (members of the Li brocade artistic association):
Huang Licai, Huang Huiqiong, Huang Qingzhen, Huang Chaocui, Huang
Zhongying, Huang Guifang, Huang Qionghua, Huang Haiying, Huang
Xiaopei, Hu Xuexiang, Zhuo Mengyao
AM: Pilot site visit - the farmer’s market of Wuzhishan county and the village’s participation in tourist market
Site visit - brocade products at the association building;
Meeting with stakeholders & beneficiaries of Fanmao village (members of the Li brocade artistic association):
Huang Licai, Zhuo Mengyao
PM: Wuzhishan - Sanya
PM: 15:50-18:55 Sanya - Shanghai
16:35-20:25Sanya - Beijing
19 Aug
24 Aug
AM: Phone interview
Zhou Weidong （ expert employed by the project ）
Liang Xiao (beneficiary from Enshi, Hubei)
Tian Ruolan (beneficiary from Enshi, Hubei)
PM: Phone interview
Joseph Lo (expert employed by the project)
At Luyou
Shanzhuang Hotel
At Fanmao village
At Wuzhishan
(county) seat
At Fanmao village
See TOR in Chinese
33