The Nanling Mountain Corridor, as an important intersection of ethnic cultures in China, has nurtured intangible cultural heritage carrying ethnic memory and cultural genes, including Yao waist weaving. Under the combined impacts of modernization, urbanization, and cultural globalization, this traditional craft faces severe challenges, including inheritance discontinuity, functional degradation, and value weakening. Based on intangible cultural heritage protection theory, cultural ecology theory, cultural identity theory, and value reconstruction theory, this paper systematically examines the historical origin, technological system, cultural connotation, and inheritance status of Yao waist weaving. Field survey data from Yao settlements in Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, and related Nanling areas are used to analyze practical difficulties such as aging inheritors, single inheritance modes, insufficient market adaptation, and weakened cultural identity. A four-in-one protection and development framework of “living inheritance-functional expansion-value reconstruction-ecological co-construction” is constructed. Specific revitalization paths are proposed from four dimensions: cultivating inheritance subjects, innovating inheritance models, promoting industrial integration, and restoring cultural ecology. Typical cases are used to verify the practical effectiveness of the reconstruction path.
S. Y. Huang (2026) studied this question.