Cherishing our rural heritage

Those works have resonated with audiences, who love projects that depict the reality of people's lives, tell the truth and reveal true feelings, he says.

Minning Town, a TV series about a poverty alleviation project in Ningxia Hui autonomous region, has gathered rave reviews as it touched many audiences with the stories based on the lives of villagers in that town.

Fan says he thinks in today's society, the appreciation of art is quite diverse, "Minning Town is liked by all the young, middle-aged and old people, which shows that in front of excellent art works, there is no age difference or art form difference.

"On the other hand, we need to tell more stories about millions of poverty relief cadres and hundreds of millions of Chinese farmers," he says.

In Fan's mind, there are three kinds of activities that artists can do to join the poverty alleviation work-one is to visit the villages and bring art to the villagers, another one is to engage in folk art collection, or to paint and create art works in the villages.

The third kind is that as art includes not only paintings or sculpture, but also design and construction planning, so all these multiple art powers can give full play in the process of poverty alleviation, he says.

As an example, Fan says teachers at the Central Academy of Fine Arts helped Jianchuan county in Yunnan province to turn their local manual craft into cultural and creative products.

"The villages are rich in traditional ethnic handicrafts and intangible cultural heritage, which need to be enlivened to facilitate the revitalization of rural cultural industries," he says.