[Chen Jinwen] The ideal relationship and actual situation between intangible cultural heritage protection and folklore research

However, the foregoing is only the ideal relationship between intangible cultural heritage protection and folklore research that we have deduced from a theoretical perspective, but the actual situation is far from the case.

I believe that as far as the actual situation is concerned, intangible cultural heritage protection not only fails to provide opportunities and motivation for the development of folklore, but also hinders the healthy development of the construction of folklore disciplines.

This obstruction or damage generally has the following aspects: I think, When talking about intangible cultural heritage protection, the reason why the so-called folklore experts make so many strange remarks is that they ignore the study and research of the basic theories of folklore.

We must protect intangible cultural heritage, but we don't have to worry about it changing or disappearing.

Wu Bingan has long pointed out: "(Folklore Author's Note) With the changes of history, the spread in different regions has changed more or less, sometimes even violently.

Therefore, the inheritance and variability of folk customs are two contradictory and unified characteristics." [8]Tao Lifan also pointed out: "Folk customs still undergo many changes with the development of society.

Social life has changed, and many new contents must be added to old traditional folk customs to adapt to the needs of new situations.

In this way, traditional folk customs change due to the continuous addition of new life content, and sometimes even changing the content of the original folk customs." [9]It can be seen that folk customs are not immutable.

With the changes of production methods, lifestyles, and the transformation of traditional society to modern society, some folk customs will mutate, and some folk customs may disappear.

Of course we need to protect folk customs, but we can only protect some of them in the form of archives or museums.

None of us have the right to ban people from watching movies and TV in order to maintain the spread of folklore and stories; no one has the right to force people to tamper or pull fiber in order to listen to rammed songs and trackers.

Nowhere will people voluntarily give up opportunities for development in order to satisfy some people's "love" for folk customs or intangible culture.

The view that the masses 'love for tradition outweighs their yearning for modern material life is just a guesswork of some scholars.

However, some of our so-called folklore experts were blinded by "rescue and protection".

They only remembered the "inheritance" of folk culture and forgot that folk culture also had "variability".

They stubbornly demanded folk customs with "unchanged", thinking that if it changed, it would not be "vulgar"; As for the endangerment or disappearance of some folk cultural phenomena, they are even more pale.

Don't you know that these phenomena are understandable and normal from the perspective of general folklore theory?