Culture is a unique thing of a nation, and it is the basis for its continued existence. When a nation's culture dies or is replaced by other cultural forms, it loses the foundation of its existence, so even if its nation still exists, there is no difference between its existence and death.
When more and more cultural forms develop from the initial prosperity to the present endangerment or even disappear, who should be responsible for these things? When more and more teenagers are infatuated with the atmosphere of western culture such as Christmas, Halloween, NBA, football and Valentine's Day, how many people can find freshness and happiness from China's traditional cultural forms such as Spring Festival, temple fair, traditional drama, shadow play and traditional folk music? When another kind of "worshipping foreign things and admiring foreign things" is quietly popular among us, we have raised our own "guns" in the face of resisting the invasion of western culture!
Many folk cultures are gradually disappearing.
Folk culture is the cultural heritage left by our ancestors. Xia Wanqun told reporters that folk culture mainly includes four kinds, namely, folk literature, folk performing arts, folk art and folk culture. However, from the current situation, these cultural forms, which inherit the wisdom of the working people in China, have gradually lost the market, lost the space for survival and development, and even died out under various impacts.
There are many kinds of folk literature, and almost all forms of Chinese folk literature can be found in Henan, including myths, stories, legends, ballads, proverbs, etc., which constitute the general history of China's oral literature and have a great influence on people's moral thoughts in the past. Henan myth is known as one of the wonders of China myth. Huangdi in Xinzheng, Fuxi in Zhoukou and Pangu in Biyang expressed the unique and meaningful national imagination in the East. However, with the process of modernization and the change of people's ideas, some folk literature no longer circulates, disappears soon, and then dies.
Folk performing arts include folk drama, folk art, music, dance, martial arts and acrobatics. They also have a long history, and have been produced, developed and passed down since ancient times. China folk drama originated from primitive labor songs and dances, which is one of the three major sources of world drama. At the end of the Republic of China, there were more than 80 kinds of folk operas in Henan, such as Daoqing and Erxian, but according to the current survey and statistics, there were only 30 kinds left, and one kind of opera died out every year on average after the founding of the People's Republic of China. Xia Wanqun said that the demise of every drama means the demise of this form of dramatic music performance, and the remaining 30 dramas also ended in a bleak way, with few professional performances. At the time of liberation, there were a large number of professional theatrical troupes in Henan. Now many of them are facing a crisis of survival, and the better ones can barely survive. Xia Wanqun gave another example to the reporter. In Yanling, Henan, there is a musical instrument called Chou, which used to be made of Buddhist music, but now it has actually died out. The only old man who can play this instrument died not long ago.
In the music culture of Naxi nationality in Lijiang, Naxi ancient music, which is well-known at home and abroad, is a must-see place for everyone who comes to Lijiang. But now, with the decline, loss and decline of Naxi ancient music, the music form will also become "this song should be only available in heaven, and people can listen to it several times."
Folk arts include porcelain, clay sculpture, jade carving, New Year pictures, paper cutting and so on. They are also precious heritages. Xia Wanqun told reporters that the mud dog of Taihao Mausoleum in Huaiyang, Henan Province, although it looks rough, has a profound historical background and is called prehistoric totem, which brings the original information to modern times. It used to be a hot seller at the temple fair in Taihaoling, but now the output of mud dogs has become less and less. I remember when I was a child, every time my mother went to the Taihao Mausoleum to burn incense, she always brought back some embarrassing mud dogs, which left me with a good childhood memory, but now few children can see this kind of craft toy.
Since the 1980s, the traditional technology has encountered new challenges. Well-known arts and crafts industries in Fujian, such as bodiless lacquerware, cork painting, bamboo weaving and Dehua porcelain and plastic, are in a difficult situation. Beijing, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other provinces and cities with developed arts and crafts are also in recession. Other art forms, such as New Year pictures and paper-cutting, were very popular in the past, but since the 1980s, few people have paid attention to the traditional woodblock New Year pictures except experts, scholars and foreigners. As for paper-cutting, rural women are the main learners at present, and young people do not attach importance to its inheritance.
Folk culture reflects the custom that ordinary people work at sunrise and rest at sunset, such as temple fairs and Spring Festival. These traditional festivals have many national connotations. However, with the arrival of a large number of western festivals, many festivals in China are gradually fading out. Experts engaged in related research pointed out: "The folk customs of many ethnic groups have disappeared. The Spring Festival, full of China folk culture, was originally the embodiment of national cohesion and affinity, but now I don't know how to get there! Nowadays, festivals have no carrier of culture, cultural connotations have become increasingly blurred, and people have lost interest in festivals. "
Yang li Ping, the "Peacock Princess", is worried about the changes she saw in Yunnan: many stunts are on the verge of extinction because they are useless, and the new generation prefers jeans to traditional clothes. After investigating Baka village of Jinuo nationality, an expert pointed out that if it is not paid attention to and protected, the cultural history of national word-of-mouth and its custom inheritance mechanism may disappear within 20 years. This situation is not uncommon in many villages in Yunnan. Feng Jicai, a famous writer, said with great anxiety that many ethnic minority villages have now become luxury houses, and the memory and inheritance of history are gone. If this development continues, our traditional things will be gone after more than ten years.
We deprived them of their right to subsistence and development.
Feng Jicai once said: "We are in a period of transition from agricultural civilization to industrial civilization. In such a special period, our culture has no carrier, which is a big problem. People feel very fresh about foreign things and throw away all the original things. " Xia Wanqun also told reporters that there are four main reasons for the loss of development opportunities and even the demise of various ethnic and folk cultures.
First of all, the farming era has ended and entered the industrial era, which directly led to changes in the soil on which the primitive folk culture depended, and changes in people's social psychology, behavior habits and spirit.
In fact, our proud China culture is composed of two parts, one is elite and classic culture, and the other is folk culture. These two parts are equally important and cannot replace each other.
Folk culture is an extremely rich and precious cultural wealth created by our ancestors for five thousand years. It is the carrier of our national spirit, emotion, personality, cohesion and affinity. It is the spiritual resource and national foundation for us to develop advanced culture, and it is also an indispensable solid spiritual connotation in our comprehensive national strength. However, because folk culture has been neglected for a long time, and this "half China culture" has not been viewed in the context of culture and globalization, so far we know nothing about the overall situation of folk culture, or even how folk culture disappeared.
Third, folk culture is a very fragile way of life. Compared with classic culture and ancient book culture, it has never been strengthened in various ways like them. Folk culture also has a fatal weakness. Its inheritance is generally word of mouth, and there are many taboos such as "male transmission to female, internal transmission to foreign". The scope of inheritance is also very narrow, most of them are mentoring and handed down from generation to generation. Once there is a disconnect, this form may soon die out.
Charming shadow puppetry, wandering rappers, humorous forms of quyi ... these splendid cultural heritages handed down from generation to generation constitute today's profound Chinese civilization of 5,000 years. However, it is precisely because most of them are passed down from generation to generation in a rather fragile way. Faced with the strengthening of open communication and the impact of multi-cultural trends, people who preach stunts are more and more confused and helpless: on the one hand, with the growth of age, their expectations for imparting stunts with their disciples are more and more intense and urgent; On the other hand, young people are busy working to make money and chasing new trends. They are not interested in national traditional culture, and no one can calm down and learn to observe. Once there is no inheritor, like a kite with a broken line, it disappears immediately and goes up in smoke. In today's industrialization and globalization, it is bound to suffer a fatal impact.
Finally, folk culture has never been correctly understood, and even has always been regarded as feudal superstition. Since the reform and opening up, China's folk culture has not had time to make a careful preparation, and various western cultures have come to China. As a cultural form with commercial behavior, they have more powerful capital and have a strong impact on the folk culture of China. In this case, many orientals, especially young people, pursue fashion, and this impetuous behavior is also destructive to China folk culture.
Inheritance is not only for the existence of a culture.
In recent years, with the collision of eastern and western cultures, there has been a reflection on national culture, and the result of this reflection is on three levels of understanding.
First of all, it is believed that the rupture of folk culture means the rupture of traditional culture to some extent. Therefore, we should not treat folk culture with historical nihilism, should not break it, but should pass it on. If what happened yesterday can be separated to today, then the civilization history of our Chinese nation for more than 5,000 years may have long since ceased to exist. Although there is no denying the great role of classic culture and classic culture, we should also see that folk culture is the crystallization of the labor of hundreds of millions of working people, and protecting folk culture is the cry of continuing folk culture.
Secondly, the more intense collision between the East and the West makes the status of folk culture rise, becoming the foundation and background of modern culture and the foundation and emotional bond of national culture. If all the eastern cultures die out, and all the memories in the brain disappear, and western cultures will replace them, then what the Chinese nation will look like will be reconsidered. Xia Wanqun said that these directly led to the emergence of the cultural movement in China, and the report of the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China clearly proposed to protect the advanced national heritage, which became the climax of this movement.
Thirdly, it can rise to the level of national cultural security. The CIA's intentions are extremely sinister. They used this sinister intention to deal with the rapidly growing generation of young people in China, and will continue to increase in their later lives. From the 50-year-long Japanese cultural aggression against Taiwan Province Province in China, we can see the clue. In those 50 years, Japan's intentions were equally sinister. They asked our compatriots in Taiwan Province Province to speak Japanese instead of Chinese, not to miss festivals in China, and to tear down temples in China and rebuild Japanese shrines, which directly led to people in Taiwan Province Province still believing in Japanese culture and even acknowledging it. The sinister intention of the Japanese is to change or even obliterate the cultural memory in the hearts of compatriots in Taiwan Province Province, which has risen to the level of cultural security in China.
The protection and rescue of folk culture has reached a very urgent point, not only from the above three levels, because our folk culture also bears the functions of five resources: political resources, educational resources, moral resources, cultural industry resources and future cultural construction resources.
"Folk culture is different from a subset of classics and history. They exist in ordinary houses and people's daily lives. They are the culture of life and an important symbol of national personality and unique spirit. " Xia Wanqun said.
From the perspective of historical inheritance, folk culture can be divided into material and intangible. Some experts believe that in the evolutionary history of Chinese civilization, we can see such a law: whenever tangible material culture is destroyed, oral intangible culture will play its great historical function and maintain, protect and inherit the spiritual blood of Chinese civilization. The reason why Chinese civilization has become the only great civilization of ancient human civilization that continues to this day is directly related to the continuous vitality of oral intangible culture. It can be said that oral and intangible cultural heritage is the "living history" of the Chinese nation's beliefs and the spiritual cornerstone of the Chinese nation's independence from the world.
A country and a nation will have the possibility and potential of endless and long-term development only if they keep the back of national memory. In this regard, we should follow the artistic law of human oral culture, rescue endangered cultural heritage in time, let the intangible culture created by human society be passed down from generation to generation, and let the achievements of civilization last for thousands of years and have a long history. This is not only the responsibility of the people, but also the mission handed down from generation to generation.
Can we keep their former glory?
With the gradual improvement of understanding, the cultural protection in China has changed from the initial comfortable state to the conscious state. At present, the National People's Congress is carrying out legislation on intangible cultural heritage. Xia Wanqun said that at present, the National People's Congress is accelerating the legislative process in these areas.
On February 18, 2003, the "China Folk Cultural Heritage Rescue Project" was officially launched, and it was also included in the "Special Entrusted Project of the National Social Science Fund". This project is the first national rescue, general survey and arrangement of folk culture in China, which takes 10 years. At that time, "China Folk Cultural Heritage Rescue Project" was launched in 15 province, and important folk culture was protected. In 2004, the project was carried out in nine other provinces and cities. Feng Jicai also cooperated with local schools to compile local textbooks to cultivate young students' national cultural feelings.
It is also paper-cut. Most of the paper-cuts in western Henan are played by ourselves, but the paper-cuts in Yuxian, Hebei are exported to more than 40 countries and regions, with an annual output value of tens of millions of yuan. "This involves the issue of market concept." Xia Wanqun believes that some folk arts are difficult to connect with the market, and even if they are supported, it is difficult to last long. Folk art with profound historical origins and rich cultural information can be developed in a targeted manner. For example, the rattan butterfly painting in Kaifeng, Henan Province, once a symbol of nobility, is now seeking more solutions to push it into the market and then better pass it on. What should we do about some folk art forms that can no longer meet the market? "Then raise it." Xia Wanqun said.
For traditional culture, only when people generally realize that national culture is the essence and worthy of world attention can traditional culture be valuable. Therefore, Xia Wanqun believes that "the national education department should pay more attention to this aspect, and the education of traditional culture should start from primary and secondary schools. Not only should we add history and culture to the teaching materials, but more importantly, every place has its own regional culture. Therefore, cultural inheritance should start with the cultivation of local cultural understanding. However, it is a pity that China's exam-oriented education has killed these! "
For the next generation of traditional culture education, this is one of the best innovative means. According to reports, it is difficult to see the traditional folk culture in the extracurricular education of schools at all levels in China. Concerned experts said with great anxiety: "The next generation's lack of education and interest will probably ruin the future of traditional folk culture!"