[Yuan Li] The elimination of intangible cultural heritage and Lu Xun's concerns

·Jintai Discussion·

Before engaging in the protection of intangible cultural heritage, we must be soberly aware of the basic fact: in the process of passing down intangible cultural heritage, we will actually come into contact with two subjects: one is the inheritance of intangible cultural heritage, and the other is the main body of intangible cultural heritage protection.

The so-called "inheritance subject" refers to what we usually call "inheritors of intangible cultural heritage." The inheritance of a country's intangible cultural heritage-whether it is the inheritance of folk literature, performing arts, folk skills and traditional rituals-is mainly carried out through them.

The so-called "protection subjects" refer to those external forces that are outside the inheritance circle but play an important role in promoting the inheritance of intangible cultural heritage.

This team is mainly composed of government departments, academia, business circles, news media and other aspects.

However, their job is not to personally inherit intangible cultural heritage, but to use their own administrative, academic, financial and media resources to encourage, promote and support intangible cultural heritage inheritors to implement living inheritance of intangible cultural heritage.

However, in some areas, our government departments have not put themselves in the right position, but have taken over and used the power in their hands to replace the inheritors.

As a result, the intangible cultural heritage has changed color and taste due to the change of inheritors.

For example, in a certain place in the southwest known as the "hometown of folk songs and dances", under the active "promotion" and "protection" of local governments in recent years, at least 70% of the "traditional programs" used to display their original ecological cultural features are no longer authentic.

Among these 70%, at least nearly 30% of the programs are purely pseudo-folk and pseudo-heritage created by contemporary people.

Although this is an extreme case, driven by this trend of adaptation and creation, the intangible cultural heritage of "original taste" in some areas is being rapidly eroded.

The reason for this situation, on the one hand, is related to the lack of understanding of the original value of intangible cultural heritage by governments at all levels, but more importantly, I am afraid that governments at all levels have confused the relationship between the protection subject and the inheritance subject in the process of protecting intangible cultural heritage.

They left aside the work that the main body should do, and instead replaced the inheritors of intangible cultural heritage with their strong position.

One of the most direct consequences of this is to replace traditional songs and dances with a large number of modern songs and dances, replace simple folk customs with gorgeous official customs, and replace pure and innocent real heritage with artificial pseudo-heritage, thus causing the preservation of a large number of traditional cultural genes.

The already rare intangible cultural heritage has been completely destroyed.

This seems to correspond to the two sentences Lu Xun said to Yao Ke in "To Yao Ke":"I thought songs, poems, poems, and tunes were originally folk objects, and literati took them for themselves.

The more they did, the more difficult they became.

They turned them into stiff stones, and they took them again and slowly hanged them." Lu Xun said that he was talking about the general law of literati destroying folk culture in China history, but in fact it also pointed out the problems existing in the process of protecting intangible cultural heritage in China at present.

The difference is that it is no longer the scholar-officials in history who transform intangible cultural heritage such as folk songs and dances, literature and art, but today's governments, businessmen and the directors, painters or literati they hired.

Due to their professional limitations and their eyesight, these people are not clear about the true value of folk art.

However, at the urging of the government, they still bring the above-mentioned "folk objects" one by one and hang them one by one.

The role of the government is really too great, so it is not difficult to imagine a very embarrassing situation in some places where "big protection and big destruction, small protection and small destruction, no protection and no destruction" appears.

The occurrence of these incidents once again tells us that as a government that does not know much about intangible cultural heritage, it is not the subject of intangible cultural heritage inheritance, but the subject of intangible cultural heritage protection.

Therefore, it should not directly participate in intangible cultural heritage inheritance work, otherwise, the intangible cultural heritage protection work will cause catastrophic damage to the inheritance of intangible cultural heritage due to mistakes in institutional arrangements.

If this is the case, the good days of China's intangible cultural heritage may come to an end.