Cultural Heritage Narrative Innovation and Adaptation Mechanisms: A Case Study of the Intercultural Communication of Chinese Han Dynasty Heritage in Germany

The deepening of the “Belt and Road” Initiative urgently requires breaking through the dilemmas of symbolization, unidirectionality, and contextual de-embedding in the export of traditional cultural heritage. This paper takes the 2023 China-Germany “Tracing the Belt and Road” cultural heritage exchange project as the research object, employing a single-case exploratory research method to construct a theoretical model of “narrative carrier innovation—cultural heritage dimension adaptation” aimed at enhancing the effectiveness of cultural heritage dissemination. The study finds that international communication projects for cultural heritage can systematically deconstruct the cultural core (“Dao”) and innovatively adapt modernized, localized dissemination forms familiar to the audiences in the host regions (“Qi”), thereby achieving a paradigm shift from passive introduction to active resonance. The paper specifically elucidates how four types of innovative carriers-digital narrative, public participatory, competitive co-creative, and academic artistic-adapt to the dimensions of historical cognition, aesthetic experience, creative interaction, and value identification in Han Dynasty cultural heritage. This adaptation ultimately forms effective cross-cultural dissemination pathways. This research provides an operable theoretical framework and practical paradigm for “Belt and Road” humanistic exchanges, offering insights for the international dissemination of cultural heritage.