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Project listings and representative bearer records concern different subjects. Check the full name, issuing body, region, date and the record itself. A project entry alone does not establish a person’s identity or prove who made a product. Materials, makers and sellers each need their own evidence.
Practise with a personal record
Zhou Shuying’s official profile lists her personal reference as 04-1753, the associated practice as 剪纸（蔚县剪纸）, paper-cutting (Yuxian paper-cutting), its project number as Ⅶ-16, and the submitting area as Yu County, Hebei Province. Note “Zhou Shuying (周淑英)—04-1753” separately from “paper-cutting (Yuxian paper-cutting)—Ⅶ-16”: the first helps locate the personal record, while the second helps find the associated practice. The two identifiers are not interchangeable.
Continue to our guide to Zhou Shuying for the account of her learning and exploration of colouring, then to Yuxian paper-cutting for the craft’s background. To ask whether she made a particular work, you still need evidence of that work’s maker and provenance. These identifiers do not answer that question for you.
Why can one number appear against two areas?
Jiangnan sizhu (江南丝竹) provides a concrete example. Under entry 71, project number Ⅱ-40, the State Council’s first national list of 2006 names both Taicang, Jiangsu Province, and Shanghai. Keep the shared project name and number, but record each area separately. A matching number is not a reason to discard one area.
We therefore display two regional recognition records while counting one Jiangnan sizhu article in the overall directory. When browsing by area, it appears under both Jiangsu and Shanghai. Adding all regional article counts together would not give a total of distinct projects. These directory counts concern our articles, not the size of the official national list.
The official Hangzhou project page, meanwhile, concerns a 2008 extension. A shared name and number do not imply identical years, areas or record scopes. Keep the name, number, area, year and original link together when comparing sources. Avoid taking one field from each of several cards and combining them into a record that does not exist.
One craft can appear in different lists
For Xuan paper, the official Chinese feature gives both the 2006 national entry 宣纸制作技艺, Xuan paper-making, and 宣纸传统制作技艺, traditional Xuan paper-making, inscribed on UNESCO’s list in 2009. When checking sources, do not combine the two years into a single record.
Make a short source note in this order:
- Copy the complete project name and the list or issuing body.
- Record that entry’s year, identifier and area separately; leave fields blank if they are not supplied.
- Open the corresponding original page and check that these details belong to the same entry.
These steps help verify information. They do not rank different lists or turn recognition of a practice into approval of a seller or product.