Creative accounting

Zhou Liya and Han Zhen, the women behind hit dance dramas like Poetic Dance: The Journey of a Legendary Landscape Painting and The Eternal Wave, have just celebrated the 10th anniversary of Dragon Boat Racing, the first joint project the duo choreographed and directed.

Two performances of the production were restaged in late August at the Guangzhou Opera House in Guangdong province, where it was premiered a decade ago.

The drama, created in June 2013 and sponsored by the China National Arts Fund in 2014, follows the fortunes of the He clan of Shawan ancient town in Guangzhou's Panyu district in the 1930s — their love stories, inheritance and development of local musical styles, and the perseverance they presented during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45).

Over the past decade, the drama has toured 60 domestic and overseas cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macao, as well as Washington and New York, with around 300 performances, and won several national and provincial honors.

Since Dragon Boat Racing, the duo has created more works with the support of the fund, including the aforementioned pair of hit dramas and Du Fu and Wing Chun.

In 2016 and 2018, Zhou was supported by the fund to create some separate, smaller dance works.

At a news conference held by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism on Aug 31, Zhou said that the past decade saw remarkable progress and development in Chinese dance dramas, and the fund, with its all-around support and guidance, has helped the endeavors of many young art creators.

This year also marks the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the China National Arts Fund.

Launched in December 2013, the fund supports creation and promotion of, and talent cultivation for, stage arts and fine arts that represent the nation's artistic benchmark, either with sponsorship or awards. The funds mainly come from the central government and public donations.

The anniversary celebration includes a tour of 15 performing arts productions it sponsored from Sept 7 to Nov 14 in Beijing, Jiangsu and Sichuan provinces.

It will also host an exhibition at the China National Arts and Crafts Museum and China Intangible Cultural Heritage Museum in Beijing in December, introducing its achievements over the past decade with physical exhibits, archives, photos and videos.

Seminars will be held to discuss the fund's sponsoring mechanism — its emphasis, operation and output — and future prospects. Related publications to review the fund's decadelong development will be released, while around 150 stage works and 400 art pieces will be displayed online.

"The fund places an emphasis on supporting the development of traditional music, opera and Chinese orchestras, as well as Chinese painting, calligraphy and seal carving, while promoting the localization of theater, opera, dance drama, musical and oil painting," says Wang Mingliang, director of the fund's management center.

Wang adds that they are keen on integrating the ideals, conviction and humanistic spirit of fine traditional culture with new artistic expression, and combining traditional Chinese aesthetics with that of modern generations.

According to Wang, since its establishment, the fund has sponsored more than 7,000 projects, including the creation of 1,234 major stage works, 484 fine arts projects, and 1,161 domestic and overseas exhibition and performance projects, as well as around 3,000 talent training and support projects.

Since 2021, it has accepted proposals from Hong Kong and Macao, subsidizing 38 projects by art institutions and individuals in the two special administrative regions, and has also been supporting young talent from Taiwan who work and study in the Chinese mainland.

Zhu Jinhui, dean of Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts in the Shaanxi provincial capital, said at the news conference that the school has benefited from the fund, particularly in supporting their representative study into the art and culture of the Zhou (c. 11th century-256 BC), Qin (221-206 BC), Han (206 BC-AD 220) and Tang (618-907) dynasties, the revolutionary art of Yan'an, western China folk arts and the Chang'an (today's Xi'an) and Loess Plateau schools of painting.

He says that the school has had 76 programs subsidized by the fund in recent years, from which 140 projects have been derived, and have generated an output value of around 270 million yuan ($37 million).

Among them, a program set up in 2017 recruited 20 hearing-impaired students with knowledge in arts and crafts creation from around the country, who created 55 wheat straw paintings.

Li Li, director of the Inner Mongolia Art Theatre, says that 187 programs from the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, mainly featuring ethnic and nomadic culture and arts, have been supported by the fund over the past decade, covering all levels of art troupes, institutions — either State-owned or private — and individual artists. Some of them have won national awards.

Notably, it has supported the creation and talent training of grassroots Ulan Muqir troupes that travel around to perform for rural herdsmen.

According to Wang, in the future, the China National Arts Fund will promote the establishment of provincial arts funds, introduce public funds to broaden the source of capital, explore ways to spend the funds more wisely and share the artistic output to a wider audience, in order to maximize the fund's guiding role in domestic artistic creation.