I-Yi Hsieh

Hsieh’s research focuses on China’s adoption of UNESCO’s policies of intangible cultural heritage, since 2003, and asks how the ascendency of heritage policies has dramatically changed folklore arts and artists in the country. Her ethnographically informed project investigates this implementation of heritage policies by governmental agencies, how it has been incorporated into the state led urban developmental project, and being promoted as a measure for marketization in the post-socialist China. Hsieh’s research also sheds light on how heritage agencies attract commercial interest groups, including businessmen of the overseas Chinese communities, to create an international network of Chinese heritage. Hsieh’s research project provides a rich and complex picture of heritage implementation in China, interrogating how this process has transformed the face of folklore arts in the country culturally and economically.