College students reveal artistic flair and flourish with modern twist

Beijing college students showcased their flair for creativity at the 13th China Beijing International Cultural and Creative Industry Expo last week, combining the latest trends in the art world with traditional Chinese cultural elements.

Students from the Academy of Arts and Design of Tsinghua University got particularly creative with their artworks, inspired by ancient Chinese characters carved onto tortoise shells, known as Jiaguwen.

Under the guidance of their supervisor Chen Nan, a professor at the academy, the students even turned the characters into emojis that can be used in online messaging, which the expo's organizers applauded for giving an element of traditional Chinese culture and thoroughly modern twist aimed at young people.

"When reinterpreting Jiaguwen, the first thing that came to our mind was we must ensure that we go in the right direction and study the ancient characters," said Yang Miao, a staff member at Chen Nan's workshop.

"The next thing we considered was making our creations cute and fun, endowing them with strong vitality rather than just copying the images from ancient Chinese culture."

Chen Nan's group has been focusing on the re-imagining of Jiaguwen since 1999. Besides emojis, the student group also exhibited picture books, bookmarks, even lollipops at the expo. All of the products were inspired by Jiaguwen.

"College students have a huge advantage when designing new products," said Shi Minfeng, Party chief of a college at the Beijing Institute of Graphic Communication.

Shi said the artwork they created was based mainly on culture they were particularly fond of and that the products developed with an open mind could bring about great, new things.

Being creative on the one hand, college students need help to better understand the manufacturing process and how to best commercialize their products, he said.

Shi suggested that universities invest more in cultivating excellent ideas from students and support entrepreneurship with incubation platforms and special funds.

A signing ceremony for cultural and creative industry projects took place on Oct 25 during the expo, featuring the protection and recreation of Chinese culture.

Companies and institutions signed contracts involving a total of 39 projects at the ceremony, with a combined contract value of 6.81 billion yuan ($ 950.11 million).

Some highlighted projects involved cartoon characters inspired by relics from the Palace Museum, traditional Chinese culture courses on historical architecture and a documentary about the spirit of Chinese craftsmanship.

(China Daily 10/31/2018 page10)