Cultural heritage successor escapes jail with a bang

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Yang Fengshen, the 79-year-old successor of an intangible cultural heritage, has escaped being handed a prison sentence in the second trial judgment of the Intermediate People’s Court of Shijiazhuang in north China’s Hebei Province on Friday.

He was convicted of illegally manufacturing explosives but was found to be exempt from criminal punishment.

Yang is pictured with the awarded certificate proving he is an inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage. /Legal Evening News Photo

Yang inherited the craft of making fires practiced in his hometown for centuries and had been a main organizer of the firework show for the Wudao Firework Festival for over twenty years.

In 2011, the festival was listed an intangible cultural heritage of the province and in 2013 Yang became an official provincial-level inheritor of the craft.

However, last February local police were tipped off by an anonymous source that Yang was making explosive materials and took him into custody.

In January this year, local prosecutors indicted Yang and he was sentenced to four and a half years behind bars by a local court on April 20 for “illegally producing explosives.”

Yang holds the court verdict from the first trial. /Legal Evening News Photo

Yang's lawyer argued that the firecrackers were made specifically for the festival without any commercial or criminal purpose and helped him file an appeal against the sentence.

Considering Yang’s firework-making was in preparation for the festival to fulfill the statutory obligations of the inheritance, the grounds of his appeal were accepted.

Yang’s case has ignited hot debate online with some accusing the final verdict as extrajudicial mercy, while others say it was absurd for Yang to be convicted in the first place.

Lawyer Wang Yongjie of Beijing Zeyong Law Offices told the Beijing News that if Yang could get a permit to make fireworks from the local government, the problem might go away.

“This is a conflict between traditional customs and the law,” he said.

Yang took a walk in his yard this summer. /The Beijing News Photo

The 17th provision of China’s criminal law stipulates that if a person who has reached the age of 75 deliberately committed a crime, he may be given a lighter or mitigated punishment.

“As a 79-year-old senior, Yang can certainly enjoy the 'preferential treatment' of the law and shall be judged in the following way,” according to scholar Owyang Chenyu.

Lighting fireworks is one of the most important customs of the Chinese Spring Festival celebration, but because of the danger and the noise disturbance they cause, the government has banned this practice in many major cities and the police targets illegal explosives and firearms.

“Since my father’s case, the firework show has been replaced by song and dance performances at the Wudao Festival and fewer villagers came,” Yang’s son told the Beijing News.