Kids from Heyang Primary School learn how to make straw sandals from a master in Heyang village. [Photo/WeChat account: jinyunbobao]

Every Thursday afternoon, Heyang village – located in Jinyun county, Lishui city, in East China's Zhejiang province – is all hustle and bustle, with about 440 primary school students coming to learn traditional handicrafts.

This is an extension course for all the students of Heyang Primary School and the course's teachers are the village's cultural inheritors: those officially charged with passing on the skills.

Heyang is a millennium-old village, boasting 15 extant ancestral halls, 15 old temples and one ancient bridge. There is the Fuchang Temple, built in the Song Dynasty (960-1279), Heyang Ancient Street built in the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) and a large number of ancient residential buildings from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

Students proudly show off their handmade sandals. [Photo/WeChat account: jinyunbobao]

The village also preserves many traditional handicrafts, such as paper cutting, straw sandals making and bamboo weaving.

With such cultural resources just 100 meters away from Heyang Primary School, Principal Wang Guobao was inspired.

"Last year, I had a meeting with the village's cultural inheritors and expressed the hope that they could pass on their skills to the children," Wang said.

"Surprisingly, everyone was willing to teach them for free."

Ding Yaojie, 58, the hereditary inheritor of Heyang paper cutting, was one of them.

"Heyang paper cutting is a folk art and its future lies in the children," he said. "I'm very happy that the school has this idea."