[Wu Bingan] Cultural memory, cultural restoration, cultural subject
The 2010 Dragon Boat Festival is the first Dragon Boat Festival since it was approved by UNESCO to be included in the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009.
Therefore, when the same festival is celebrated in the same city, two different festivals have emerged: One is the traditional festival system initiated by the people; The other is the "Dragon Boat Festival" sponsored and planned by the government.
It organizes a number of professional performance groups, mobilizes a large number of primary and secondary school students to participate in performances in various so-called sections, movements, sessions or sub-projects, and mobilizes high-tech means such as sound and light to create festivals.
Who celebrates folk and traditional festivals?
Cultural memory is the basic function of inheritance
Cultural memory can be said to be the intrinsic psychological function for the inheritance and inheritance of human culture, and the memory of traditional festivals and folk culture has without exception become the most basic function for inheritance.
Once the traditional cultural memory of an ethnic group is broken or disappeared by strong interference from external forces, it will cause the incompleteness, decline or decline of cultural history, which will inevitably block the progress and development of social civilization of the ethnic group.
Amid the heated discussions about protecting the traditions of China's folk festivals, it is certainly necessary to learn people to review and examine the specific content and manifestations of traditional festival activities; however, in the face of familiar traditional festivals, it has become more important to arouse people's understanding of the agricultural cultural roots that gave rise to folk festivals and the deep cultural memories that constitute the customary rules of folk festivals.
In the past half century, China's folk culture and the chain of inheritance of its folk festivals have suffered rapid rupture, making the rich and colorful festival content and forms extremely fragmented and overshadowed, and have caused generations to lose too much cultural memories, including the loss of cultural memories of festival folk customs with unique characteristics of China's farming civilization.
The vast majority of young people are keen on celebrating Western festivals.
How to diagnose the sequelae of this forced rupture of the spontaneous inheritance chain of festival folk customs and how to treat the sequelae of at least two generations losing the memory and inheritance of festival folk culture have become top priority.
Therefore, it is naturally necessary to awaken the cultural memories of traditional festivals in the whole society.
In particular, it is necessary to actively and comprehensively conduct a census and search for those festival folk cultural memories that are forced to be secretly passed down, and activate the people's innate rich layers of folk customs passed down from generation to generation.
Information, so that they can naturally be integrated into diverse festival folk cultural life that suits the needs of today's people.
It is the key for the people to self-protect their cultural memories and consciously inherit them.
In terms of awakening the memory of festival folk culture, inheritors of folk cultural heritage have set a good example for us.
Academics engaged in the protection of intangible cultural heritage have noticed that the cultural memory of many elderly inheritors of festivals and customs is an important basis for the protection of cultural heritage of folk festivals in recent years.
Cultural restoration makes culture more complete
During the rescue process, should we repair the missing or damaged festival folk cultural content and manifestations? How to repair it? Who will repair it? Some people replied: "Chen Guzi rotten sesame seeds" means to be abandoned, and the "four old" means to be smashed.
Some people replied: Since it is a rapid development of leapfrog modernization, why must those old ancient festival cultures be preserved? Wouldn't it be better to be completely innovative? However, the emergence of traditional festivals has its own profound causes that have been recognized by the people for thousands of years, and its continuation also has its own vitality recognized by the people; therefore, when the folk culture of festivals is destroyed, the people's spontaneous self-cultural restoration becomes a good traditional habit.
Folk festivals have gone through thousands of years of free and spontaneous inheritance in the farming life of China people.
They have long formed the content and expression of the major life of the whole nation that has been passed down from generation to generation.
The cultural connotation and extension of each festival are characterized by relatively stable perfection and harmony.
The folk and cultural connotation of traditional festivals in China has always been closely related to the expectations and visions of people's survival and life.
In the protection of intangible cultural heritage projects in recent years, it has been found that almost all folk songs, dances, music and other entertainment and folk activities are closely related to the original cultural connotations of various festivals and temple fairs.
At present, in the protection of festival folk cultural heritage, the tradition of cultural restoration is playing an important role.
With the continuous excavation and repair of the diverse contents and manifestations of various festival customs, festival cultural life has become more and more colorful in recent years.
As people become more and more aware that festival cultural customs that truly represent tradition are not contradictory to modernization development, but complement each other more.
Respect and maintain the dominant position of culture
The memory and cultural restoration of festival folk culture are urgent needs to fully reveal the connotation of festival culture, inherit and carry forward the excellent traditions of festival folk customs.
They have a strong color of protecting, maintaining and promoting festival folk culture, and show distinctive public welfare characteristics; Most folk flower fairs and incense clubs also voluntarily abide by the cultural customs traditions of festivals and temple fairs.
How to highlight the cultural dominant position of the people in festival folk customs practice activities?
As the name suggests,"folk customs" theoretically say that the subject of any "custom" is the "people" who carry "custom", and its cultural subject is the people.
Since ancient times, the traditional festival customs of human society have been accumulated and created by people of various ethnic groups in their production and life; The farming ethnic group in China, represented by the Han nationality, has created a relatively systematic folk festival system since the ancient farming civilization period.
It has been passed down from generation to generation and formed a solid collective memory of festival folk culture.
This is tens of millions of people.
Cultural memory as the main body, this is the festival folk cultural right that the people are born with and enjoy.
The festive folk calendars familiar to China people are perfectly integrated with their agricultural farming and natural seasons.
The public creatively identified festivals and vividly explained the profound connotation of various festivals with colorful folk customs.
All of these are enough to highlight the people's cultural dominant position in festival folk customs.
The people's memory of festival folk culture promotes the inheritance of festivals from generation to generation; the people's concept of self-restoration of festival folk culture maintains the normal development of festival culture and makes up for the damage to the festival cultural ecology; well-known and unknown festival culture among the people The inheritors have always protected festival culture to continue to develop and prosper.
Practice has proved that in the inheritance and protection of festival folk customs, the people's cultural dominant position cannot be shaken.
However, to this day, it is common to not respect the wishes of the people and the fine folk traditions of festivals and temple fairs.
In the name of traditional festivals and temple fairs, we use all means to fabricate false folk customs, apply them rigidly and randomly tamper with entertainment that distorts the cultural connotation of festivals, and confuse the public.
It is not unique to use the cultural space of traditional festivals to create fabricated festivals and temple fairs without any traditions of festivals or temple fairs, and to lure people into being deceived.
Some local governments host festival cultural entertainment activities that lack the people-friendly concepts of "people-oriented" and "having fun with the people" since ancient times.
They even use high-priced admission tickets to exclude most ordinary people from festival casinos, making it difficult for most people to share the joy of festival folk customs.
The festival cultural rights and dominant status of most urban and rural ordinary people have been unduly infringed.
The leading role of the government in festival cultural activities should first be fully reflected in protecting people's rights and interests in enjoying festival culture.
Instead of unilaterally using festival cultural spaces and platforms to promote unlimited commercial monopoly in the festival market and turning spiritual and cultural festivals into pure material consumption festivals almost completely ignore the social benefits of festival culture and the spiritual pursuits of the general public.
Respecting and safeguarding the concept of people's dominant position in festival cultural life and highlighting the dominant position of people's culture should become a top priority.
This article was published in China Social Science Journal on July 1, 2010)