About Guanyi
Tradition, carried into contemporary life.
Guanyi is a cultural platform rooted in Dongguan, exploring how Chinese living heritage can be understood, shared and reimagined for today.
About Guanyi
A contemporary approach to living heritage.
Guanyi explores the continuing life of Chinese cultural heritage — through the materials, skills, stories and practices that carry knowledge from one generation to another.
Rooted in Dongguan, we begin with the cultural traditions around us while looking beyond a single place or form. Through research, storytelling, cultural projects, objects and creative expression, we seek thoughtful ways to connect inherited knowledge with contemporary life.
Our aim is not simply to preserve what came before, but to understand how tradition can continue to be encountered, interpreted and carried forward today.
Living Heritage
Heritage lives through people and practice.
Heritage is not only what is preserved from the past. It also lives through people — in skills that are practised, materials that are understood, stories that are remembered and customs that continue to shape everyday life.
These traditions are not static. They are carried forward through use, interpretation and adaptation, while remaining connected to the knowledge and cultural contexts from which they grew.
For Guanyi, understanding living heritage means paying attention to both continuity and change: what is inherited, what is practised today, and how cultural knowledge may continue into the future.
From Dongguan
Rooted in place, open to a wider cultural landscape.
Guanyi begins in Dongguan, a city whose cultural traditions offer a meaningful starting point for our work.
Here, the heritage of Guanxiang — Dongguan agarwood culture — connects material, craft, memory, trade and place across generations. It is one of the traditions through which we are learning how local cultural knowledge can be explored with depth and shared with a wider audience.
But Dongguan is a starting point, not a boundary. As Guanyi develops, our perspective extends towards the broader landscape of Chinese living heritage — discovering connections between different traditions, places and ways of making, while remaining attentive to the particular contexts that give each tradition its meaning.
How We Work
Different ways of engaging with heritage.
Cultural heritage can be approached from many directions. Guanyi brings together research, storytelling, cultural projects, objects and creative expression — allowing each tradition to be explored in ways that respond to its own context.
01 — Research
Looking closely at historical sources, cultural contexts, materials and practices to build a more grounded understanding of each tradition.
02 — Stories
Following the people, places and memories through which cultural traditions become part of lived experience.
03 — Projects
Developing focused cultural initiatives that bring research, storytelling and creative practice together.
04 — Objects
Exploring how craft, material and cultural memory can take tangible form in objects for contemporary life.
05 — Creative Expression
Using film, digital media and contemporary visual language to explore new ways of encountering and sharing cultural heritage.
Looking Forward
Carrying heritage forward, thoughtfully.
Guanyi is a continuing exploration of how cultural heritage can remain meaningful in a changing world.
By looking closely at where traditions come from, how they are practised and what they mean to people today, we hope to create thoughtful connections between cultural memory and contemporary life — while leaving space for traditions to continue in their own ways.