Keeping Watch on Intangible Cultural Heritage: Live Transmission and Sustainable Development of Chinese Lacquer Art
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Probably, Intangible Cultural Heritage is the most complex to manage by its very nature. This research focus the main issues to deal with (knowledge, protection, conservation and dissemination) and propose an interesting approach to enhance them. The case study selected is appropriate and it can be said that the conclusions can be shared in many others intangible cultural heritage examples. As a suggestion for authors, the sixth conclusion opens a wide field for future research in intangible research sustainability; GIS and spatial data management can be a useful tool to achieve higher objectives in this research.
Author Response
Thank you for your valuable comments and the content you mentioned has been added to the article. Thanks again！
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper is about Chinese lacquer art transmission and preservation and is aimed to advance the current knowledge about this peculiar intangible cultural heritage, which is at risk of disappearing.
The topic of the paper is in line with the Special Issue and – per se – it’s quite interesting.
Nonetheless, there are a number of weaknesses that the authors should address:
•The paper is quite confused, both in language and structure.
•As far as language is concerned, English definitely needs to be revised; moreover, there are several redundancies in the text and sentences that need to be polished.
•As far as the structure, this is quite unclear: Section 2 reports some literature review (as it is announced in the Introduction), then Section 3 is about the “Methods” of the study. Then, it seems Section 4 again contains elements coming from the literature review. Section 5 focuses more specifically on Chengdu Lacquer art, Section 6 introduces the context of the study (the Chengdu Lacquer Art Training Institute), but it also contains the results of the study, ending up with 6 ‘codes’, which should summarize the main outcomes of the study. In Section 7 (Conclusions) the authors put forward their main indications to address the open issues of the field. In my view, the authors should significantly restructure the paper, and provide a more traditional outline.
•Even if in the end the reader understands the final aim of the paper, still I would suggest the authors to make an effort to state the research questions more clearly and at the very beginning of the paper. This would facilitate reading.
•The section about the “Methods” is particularly weak: the authors only mention the fact that they have conducted semi-structured interviews, but no more details are provided and the entire section is quite confused. Somehow it also emerges they have conducted observations, but there is not direct mention of this.
•Similarly, the section presenting the results is quite confused and unclear: the description of the context is somehow mixed up with the excerpts of the interviews and the final 6 ‘codes’ (why did the authors call them ‘codes’? what does this expression mean in this context?) describe issues that have been already mentioned somehow in the previous sections, so that – in the end - the actual contribution provided by the study is not evident.
•The attempt made by the authors in the final section is delineate possible actions/ directions that could be undertaken in order to address the open issues of the field, is appraisable. Nonetheless, the link of their indications with the reported results is not stressed enough.
Author Response
Reviewer 2
The paper is about Chinese lacquer art transmission and preservation and is aimed to advance the current knowledge about this peculiar intangible cultural heritage, which is at risk of disappearing.
The topic of the paper is in line with the Special Issue and – per se – it’s quite interesting.
Nonetheless, there are a number of weaknesses that the authors should address:
•The paper is quite confused, both in language and structure.
•As far as language is concerned, English definitely needs to be revised; moreover, there are several redundancies in the text and sentences that need to be polished.
Response：Thank you for your comments. The paper has once again been thoroughly checked by a professional editor of English expression.
•As far as the structure, this is quite unclear: Section 2 reports some literature review (as it is announced in the Introduction), then Section 3 is about the “Methods” of the study. Then, it seems Section 4 again contains elements coming from the literature review. Section 5 focuses more specifically on Chengdu Lacquer art, Section 6 introduces the context of the study (the Chengdu Lacquer Art Training Institute), but it also contains the results of the study, ending up with 6 ‘codes’, which should summarize the main outcomes of the study. In Section 7 (Conclusions) the authors put forward their main indications to address the open issues of the field. In my view, the authors should significantly restructure the paper, and provide a more traditional outline.
Response: Thank you for your advice. We have adopted your suggestion, adjusted the structure of the article and provided a more traditional outline.We are willing to explain to you the previous writing ideas: the focus of this paper is the problems faced by lacquer art live transmission and its corresponding countermeasures, and We think that the discovery of lacquer art inheritance dilemma should be composed of two parts, one is summed up through theoretical research, that is, through reports and literature review, "horizontally" explores the current research status and the universal problems of lacquer art transmission from the macro level;The other part is to excavate some inheritance dilemmas and problems that have not yet been paid attention to and deeply discussed through case research. The study thinks that these two parts are closely related, so the content of section 4, (challenges faced by live transmission of chinese lacquer art), is placed near part 5 (the case of Chengdu lacquer art inheritance), rather than in section 2 (literature review). In addition, the section 5 is an overall description of the development and inheritance of Chengdu lacquer art, and the section 6 is to analyze a successful representative of Chengdu lacquer art inheritance, especially to make a specific statement of its inheritance process, and 6 main inheritance "problem" are extracted from it. Some of these "problem" are mentioned in section4, but some are new discoveries, so the section 7 is mainly to put forward specific sustainable inheritance suggestions for these problems.
•Even if in the end the reader understands the final aim of the paper, still I would suggest the authors to make an effort to state the research questions more clearly and at the very beginning of the paper. This would facilitate reading.
Response:The research issues have been explained at the beginning of the article. “it is extremely essential to verify and reveal the challenges and dilemmas in the lacquer art transmission, and come up with corresponding protection measures around these problems. The research, through literature review, explores the current research status and the universal problems of lacquer art transmission from the macro level, and finds that there is still a relative lack of researches on exploring the sustainable problems of lacquer art transmission from the transmission relationship, transmission behavior and transmission process. So,With a view to make up for the deficiencies of the existing research and further supplement the empirical evidence, the current research, with the transmission of "Chengdu lacquer art" as an example and through in-depth interviews, tracks and investigates the whole process of transmission of Chengdu Lacquer Art Training Institute, and "vertically" analyzes the survival situation of lacquer art transmission and the core problems affecting transmission behaviors from the micro level. Finally,The research proposes corresponding countermeasures and suggestions for the identified key problems.”
•The section about the “Methods” is particularly weak: the authors only mention the fact that they have conducted semi-structured interviews, but no more details are provided and the entire section is quite confused. Somehow it also emerges they have conducted observations, but there is not direct mention of this.
Response:Some details have been added to the methodology section. The contents and materials of the semi-structured interview are presented in section 6, and the italics part are the original materials of the interview. The method of participatory observation is mainly used to understand the process of living inheritance and some behavioral manifestations of inheritors. For example, sentence 354-360 is some of the findings in participatory observation.
•Similarly, the section presenting the results is quite confused and unclear: the description of the context is somehow mixed up with the excerpts of the interviews and the final 6 ‘codes’ (why did the authors call them ‘codes’? what does this expression mean in this context?) describe issues that have been already mentioned somehow in the previous sections, so that – in the end - the actual contribution provided by the study is not evident.
Response: In order to make the inheritance dilemma described in the case analysis more clearly presented, we summarized it concretely.Six pieces of code are six aspects of the problem combed according to the case description. Perhaps the inaccurate use of the words led to misunderstanding, and the "code" has been changed to "problem."
In addition, We don't quite agree that “the issues that have been already mentioned somehow in the previous sections...”. It is not hard to find that the previous researches mostly analyze the plight of live transmission of lacquer art from the aspects of lacquer art creation, production and sales, and are mostly "result-oriented" discussions, while from the transmission relationship, transmission behavior and transmission process, there is still a relative lack of researches on exploring the sustainable problems of lacquer art transmission. Through the case study, taking the inheritance behavior as the breakthrough point, we focus on some problems existing in the inheritance process and inheritance relationship, which is relatively new.
•The attempt made by the authors in the final section is delineate possible actions/ directions that could be undertaken in order to address the open issues of the field, is appraisable. Nonetheless, the link of their indications with the reported results is not stressed enough.
Response: Thank you for your advice. In order to make the link of their indications with the reported results is closer, we have made the corresponding content supplement and structural order adjustment so that it can better correspond to each other.
Finally, if you have any other valuable comments, please do not hesitate to give us your advice. Thank you very much.
Reviewer 3 Report
Outstanding essay on an important topic. Very well written and an extensive engagement with the subject. Clearly the highest scholarship. Well illustrated. Good references. A strong contribution.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your recognition. Thank you forever.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
I think the authors have done a significant effort to address my suggestions. They have reworked the overall structure of the paper and sufficiently improved the English language, so that now the paper is clearer. Moreover, the section about the methods has been enriched with additional details.
There is still some concern, especially regarding lines 80-94, where the authors introduce the structure of the paper. In these lines - that are crucial for the reader’s understanding – sentences are very long and complex and there is still some problem with the language, so I would invite the authors to revise in particular this part of the paper.
Author Response
Thank you for your valuable advice. We have revised it in accordance with your instructions. Please refer to the paper. Thank you very much.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
