Integrating General and Vocational Education to Sustain and Renew Traditional Chinese Culture: A Case Study of Chongqing Three Gorges Vocational College

ABSTRACT This study investigates how a Chinese higher vocational college can align skills training with the inheritance and innovative development of fine traditional Chinese culture. Grounded in perspectives that view vocational education as cultural transmission and identity work and informed by the lenses of general‐vocational integration and collaborative governance, we report an instrumental qualitative case study of Chongqing Three Gorges Vocational College in Wanzhou District. Data were collected across more than 10 rounds of fieldwork, including ethnographic and participatory observation; interviews and oral‐history conversations with key stakeholders; documentary and archival analysis; and teaching‐research seminars. The findings illustrate how the college identified and mobilized regional cultural and intangible cultural heritage resources, translating them into a “bring‐in + go‐out” partnership chain that connected the college with local communities, cultural institutions, and nearby schools. We also show how “feature curricula” and “signature activities” fostered an immersive culture‐skills ecology, and how a safeguarding mechanism, which combines platform support, faculty collaboration, and assessment innovation, shifted cultural work from symbolic inclusion to sustained practice. The study proposes a multidimensional model of general‐vocational integration and underscores vocational colleges' potential to serve as active nodes in the creative transformation and living continuity of traditional culture.