The Evolution and Innovative Development of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Jiaodong Flower Cake

Recently, at the Jiaodong Flower Cake Selection event held in Yantai, colorful, diverse, and culturally rich intangible cultural heritage works not only challenged people's inherent understanding of traditional noodles, but also signaled a profound transformation in the field of intangible cultural heritage. These traditional Jiaodong noodles, known as "flower cakes", have quietly transformed from simple food on the people's dining tables into regional cultural symbols with both edible and aesthetic values. As a senior intangible cultural heritage protection worker lamented, "While adhering to traditional production techniques, they have made essential improvements in appearance design, color matching, pattern combination, and integration of historical and cultural elements." This phenomenon not only reflects the transformation of the external form of Jiaodong flower cakes, but also touches on the core proposition of intangible cultural heritage protection and development - how traditional techniques can achieve innovative transformation through "upholding integrity and innovation" under the dual impact of globalization and modernization, and thus gain new vitality? This article aims to take Jiaodong Huabao as a case study to deeply analyze the evolution path and internal logic of this intangible cultural heritage project in contemporary times.

1.Normalized Inheritance: The Historical Origins and Traditional Techniques of Jiaodong Flower Cake

Jiaodong Huabao, a noodle culture deeply rooted in the folk society of the eastern Shandong Peninsula, can be traced back to the Ming Dynasty. In the era of relatively scarce material resources in agriculture, flour was a precious ingredient, and it was molded into various auspicious shapes for use in festivals, ceremonies, weddings, architecture, and other ceremonial occasions, reflecting the people's longing and spiritual sustenance for a better life. The production techniques of traditional Jiaodong Huabao are a complex and rigorous knowledge system, including mastery of the characteristics of local wheat flour, timing and temperature control of aged flour fermentation, manual kneading strength and skills, and control of the heat during steaming. The inheritance of this skill has long relied on oral transmission and practical imitation within families or village communities. Its core is the unity of functionality (sacrifice, consumption) and symbolism (blessing, symbolism). Although the shape has certain norms, such as "holy insects", "jujube cakes", "wealthy fish", etc., the overall style is simple and natural in color (often embellished with ingredients such as red dates and red beans).

In the context of contemporary intangible cultural heritage protection, the "adherence to tradition" of this traditional technique is first reflected in the faithful continuation of the core technological process. Many inheritors insist on using the traditional fermentation method of aged noodles. Although this method is time-consuming, laborious, and difficult to control, it can give the bread a unique taste and flavor, which is the "soul" that industrial yeast cannot replicate. At the same time, cultural connotations closely related to festivals and life etiquette are consciously excavated, recorded, and strengthened. Specific themes and shapes such as "Qingming Yan", "Dragon Boat Festival Lucky Tiger", "Wedding Dragon and Phoenix Happy Bun" are systematically organized to ensure the cultural memory and community identity behind intangible cultural heritage projects can survive. This adherence to the authenticity of craftsmanship and cultural core constitutes a stable cornerstone for the contemporary development of Jiaodong Huabao, avoiding innovation from becoming a water without source or a tree without roots.

2.Artistic Transformation: Aesthetic Dimension Intervention and Expansion of Intangible Cultural Heritage Value

The most striking change in Jiaodong Huabao is its magnificent transformation from "food" to "art". One of the key driving forces for this transformation is that some graduates from art schools have joined the team of inheritors of Jiaodong's intangible cultural heritage. The involvement of professional art talents has brought about a systematic understanding of color theory, composition, design concepts, and contemporary art perspectives. They collaborate with traditional artisans to expand the shapes of their figurines from relatively fixed folk patterns to encompass a wide range of historical figures, myths and legends, natural flowers, and modern abstract patterns. In terms of color application, we have broken through the limitations of natural colors in food ingredients and developed safe and edible plant-based pigments, achieving richer and more harmonious color gradients and combinations, giving the colors of the cakes a painting like expressive power.

This artistic transformation essentially injects the modern aesthetic system into traditional material carriers, greatly expanding the cultural and economic value of Jiaodong's flower cakes. It transcends the scope of regional festival food and becomes an art craft that can be independently appreciated and collected, even entering modern cultural spaces such as exhibition halls and art markets. For example, the theme cake series integrated with regional cultural elements such as "Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea" and "Jiaodong Paper Cuttings pattern" are not only beautiful, but also become a three-dimensional narrative medium to spread local culture. This process reflects an important direction of innovation in intangible cultural heritage: on the basis of respecting the core of traditional skills, actively absorbing external knowledge resources, expanding its forms of expression and aesthetic boundaries, enabling it to engage in dialogue with contemporary aesthetic tastes, and thus occupy a place in the new cultural consumption field.

3.The Revolution of Production and Circulation: Integration of Industrialization Path with Modern Market

Another profound transformation of Jiaodong Huabao occurred at the level of production organization and sales model, that is, "the scale of production has also changed from individual households to factory production". Traditionally, the production of Jiaodong flower cakes is a typical family workshop style production, serving personal use or limited gifts from relatives and friends. Nowadays, a binary mixed production model of "factory+studio" has been formed. Factory production is responsible for meeting the market's demand for standardized and mass-produced basic products, ensuring stable quality and supply efficiency; And the studio (or heritage workshop) focuses on high-end customization, creative research and development, and boutique production, which is the forefront of inheriting exquisite skills and artistic innovation. This model not only reduces some costs and expands market coverage through scaling, but also maintains the unique value and high-end positioning of intangible cultural heritage through personalized and artistic studio products.

In terms of sales channels, the combination of "e-commerce+physical stores" has completely changed its circulation scope. E-commerce platforms (such as Taobao, Jingdong, Tiktok) enable Jiaodong to break through geographical restrictions, "sell to all parts of the world", and directly reach new consumer groups at home and abroad interested in traditional Chinese culture and handicrafts. The display of content on social media (production process, exquisite products) further stimulates potential cultural and emotional consumption. Physical stores are based locally, providing experiential, customized, and brand display services to strengthen local cultural identity. The innovation of this production and sales model has transformed Jiaodong Huabao from a local folk matter into a tradable cultural commodity, and the realization of its economic value has fed back the inheritance and innovation of skills, forming a virtuous cycle of sustainable development.

4.Theoretical Perspective: The Logic of "Upholding Integrity and Innovating" in Cultural Reproduction

The contemporary evolution of Jiaodong flower cakes can be explained by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's theory of "cultural reproduction". Cultural reproduction is not simply copying, but a dynamic process of various capitals (cultural capital, economic capital, social capital) recombining and transforming within the field. In the case of Jiaodong Flower Cake:

The transformation and appreciation of cultural capital: Traditional production techniques and folk knowledge are inherent cultural capital. By introducing art education (a new cultural capital), this traditional capital has been re encoded and packaged, resulting in a new type of cultural capital (artistic treasure) that is more in line with contemporary aesthetic tastes, and its symbolic and exchange values have been significantly enhanced.

The injection and circulation of economic capital: Industrialization and e-commerce have brought about the injection of economic capital, making production expansion, technological improvement, and brand marketing possible. Economic capital supports innovative activities such as research and development of new designs and safety pigments, and the product premium brought by innovation in turn increases economic capital, achieving effective transformation of cultural value into economic value.

The reconstruction of social capital: changes in the structure of the inheritor team (art students joining), cooperation with universities, enterprises, e-commerce platforms, and cultural institutions, and the expansion of the project's social network (social capital). The new social network has brought new resources, information, and market opportunities, further promoting the innovative development of the project.

'Upholding integrity' ensures the stability and legitimacy of core cultural capital (traditional skills and cultural connotations), which is the foundation of reproduction; Innovation "refers to actively combining other forms of capital (artistic knowledge, industrial capital, market channels) with cultural capital under new social and historical conditions, in order to achieve the value reshaping and vitality regeneration of intangible cultural heritage in the contemporary field. The successful practice of Jiaodong Huabao shows that the inheritance and development of intangible cultural heritage is not a static preservation like a museum, but a positive and future oriented cultural production practice.

5.Inspiration and Prospect: Reflections on the Path of Active Inheritance of Intangible Cultural Heritage

The case of Jiaodong Huabao provides valuable insights for the protection and inheritance of intangible cultural heritage in a broader sense:

Openness and Cross border Integration: Intangible cultural heritage projects should maintain an open mindset, actively embrace professional knowledge from other fields such as design, art, marketing, and management, and stimulate innovation potential through cross-border integration.

Balancing tradition and modernity: finding a balance between "upholding integrity" and "innovation" is crucial. Innovation should not harm the core skills and cultural identity of intangible cultural heritage, but should be creatively transformed based on a deep understanding of tradition.

Building a diversified value realization mechanism: actively expanding the aesthetic value, economic value, educational value, etc. of intangible cultural heritage, and deeply integrating it into life, society, and art through multiple paths such as industrialization, artisticization, and education, to achieve comprehensive and dynamic inheritance.

Empower the inheritors: Emphasize the comprehensive ability cultivation of inheritors (including newly joined young inheritors), so that they not only master skills, but also understand the market, know how to communicate, and are good at innovation.

Looking ahead to the future, Jiaodong flower cakes still need to face continuous adjustments in the relationship between standardization and personalization, mass production and handmade essence, rapid consumption and cultural depth. How to further explore its health and wellness connotations (such as developing coarse grains and low sugar varieties), how to use digital technologies (such as AR interaction and digital collections) to expand the experience, and how to more accurately tell the story of Chinese culture in international communication are all directions worth exploring in depth.

In short, the contemporary evolution of Jiaodong's flower cakes vividly illustrates the profound truth that 'a good intangible cultural heritage project, as long as we do not remain stagnant and are brave enough to uphold integrity and innovation, will definitely achieve new development'. Starting from a simple aroma of noodles, it has completed a profound cultural reproduction through the persistence of skills, the reshaping of aesthetics, and the exploration of the market. It not only benefits friends from all over the world in the production of traditional noodles, but also provides a highly convincing model for us to think about the creative transformation and innovative development of traditional culture in contemporary society. This enlightens us that the vitality of intangible cultural heritage lies in the never-ending dialectical movement of "upholding integrity" and "innovation".

(Author: Dean of Hong Kong Television International Calligraphy and Painting Academy, Dean of Shandong Qunwen Painting Academy, Member of China Couplet Association, Director and Deputy Director of Professional Committee of Shandong Calligraphers Association, Senior Researcher of Qilu Cultural Inheritance and Development Promotion Association, Visiting Professor of Shandong Community Education Research Service Center, Former Full time Deputy Secretary and Deputy Director of Shandong Cultural Center, Deputy Director and Research Curator of Shandong Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center, Li Sifeng)