Ornaments, Talismans, and New Trends: Cultural Evolution, Functional Transformation and Contemporary Challenges of Silver Jewelry from Chaozhou, China

Throughout its history, silver jewelry from Chaozhou, China, has continuously taken on new cultural identities: it symbolized ritual customs and integrated Han culture in the Song Dynasty, shifted to secular prayers and emotional tokens in the Ming Dynasty, and reached its heyday in the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China period, thus achieving a cultural transformation that integrated commodities, symbols, and modernity. Its history is essentially an evolutionary process of adapting to the times and reconstructing cultural roles, carrying the collective memory of the Chaozhou people and embodying the spiritual civilization of the Chaoshan region. Nowadays, it urgently needs a new round of identity transformation, with "creative transformation" as its fundamental path. Taking physical materials from the Guangdong Museum as the core and adopting the material culture research method, this study explores its cultural value and contemporary aesthetics, and summarizes its contemporary dilemmas including the modern imbalance of inheritance mechanisms and production modes, as well as ambiguous positioning and competitive disempowerment in the regional cultural ecosystem. Finally, it points out that the development of silver jewelry from Chaozhou requires close integration with national strategies, the market, and new technologies, seeking support for funding, talent and legal policies in the context of rural revitalization, and achieving innovations in aesthetics and technology through mutual learning and exchange.