Folk artists get due honor

For the first time, folk craftsmen and artists from all over China have received national recognition for passing down their traditions.

The Chinese National Academy of Arts presented the Xinchuan Award to 60 inheritors of traditional Chinese culture recently. They were selected from 1,488 national-level inheritors of intangible cultural heritage, named by the Ministry of Culture since 2007.

"Inheritors of traditional culture are creators of history, although their names have often been missed by history books," says Liu Kuili, president of China Folklore Society. "We should pay tribute to them because their works benefit our descendants."