Chao Gejin: Oral tradition from the perspective of intangible cultural heritage protection
Introduction to the speaker: Chao Gejin, director, researcher and doctoral supervisor of the Institute of Ethnic Literature, China Academy of Social Sciences.
He is currently the president of the International Society for Epic Studies, the vice chairman of the International Council of Philosophy and Humanities, the president of China Folklore Society, and the president of China Minority Literature Society.
He has long been committed to the study of folklore and ethnic minority literature.
He is the author of many works and dozens of papers such as "Oral Epic Poetics: A Study of the Syntactic of Rampiler's Formula" and "A World of Multiple Choices-Theoretical Descriptions of Contemporary Minority Writers 'Literature".
The "other wheel" role of oral tradition
Oral tradition is an important part of intangible cultural heritage.
What is intangible cultural heritage? UNESCO made it very clear in the Convention for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage that intangible cultural heritage refers to the knowledge, skills, artistic creations, etc.
passed down from generation to generation by people in a specific community.
Intangible cultural heritage is mainly divided into five categories under the framework of the United Nations work.
The first category is oral tradition and the language as its carrier.
Why study oral tradition? This requires returning to a very fundamental topic-when did the human species evolve to learn to speak?
"Oral tradition" is a foreign word.
In my country's academic and cultural inheritance, there are also other names.
For example, oral inheritance is used to summarize such a thing-people convey information by speaking-the skills of conveying information and the content of conveying information are combined to form oral tradition.
Oral traditions can also be divided into broad and narrow terms.
Oral tradition in the broad sense refers to all forms of oral communication, and whatever is said is an oral tradition; oral tradition in the narrow sense or oral tradition that has been studied much in academia mainly refers to oral art, such as myths, ballads, stories, epic recitation and other words.
The art form.
A British research team found that 5% of the genes in mammals are stable and have almost no mutations.
In the past 1 million years, the amino acids of these genes have mutated twice in humans, giving humans the ability to speak.
The ability, which no other animal has evolved.
Of course, the ability to speak is also a comprehensive evolutionary process.
Oratory techniques were prevalent in ancient Greece.
At that time, some politicians were very good at speaking in front of the public.
Throughout the history of Western political academia, many examples of this can be seen.
Whether in China or foreign countries, written literature has absorbed a large amount of folk things in the development process, and sometimes refined these folk words.
Different people around the world have the ability to speak, and use this to pass on knowledge, information, ideas and art from generation to generation, making different civilizations more brilliant.
Western experts studying human civilization believe that the earliest written symbols are 8000 years old and are some number symbols in the Balkans.
Later, there are ancient characters from the Lianghe River Basin, oracle bone inscriptions from China, and Indian characters from the Americas.
The invention and use of words have also gone through a complex evolutionary process, with some influencing each other and some being invented independently.
The forms of characters are also very different, such as square characters in China and pinyin characters in the West.
People around the world record and process their phonetic symbols through their own ingenuity and different technologies.
It can be seen that humans first had language and then written language.
The history of language is long and the history of writing is short.
After writing was invented, was it common everywhere? Not really.
In medieval Europe, the ability to read and write was mostly in the hands of monastery monks and a few aristocratic manor owners.
The same is true for China.
When China was liberated in 1949, the number of illiterate people was still quite large.
By the beginning of the 20th century, one-third of Ireland's people were still functionally illiterate and had literacy difficulties, which meant that they could not truly read and master writing fluently.
If we push forward further, what did these words do in the first place? It has been seen in various places that early writing was not mainly used to write and record literary works, but was used for practical records, such as divination, commercial contracts, etc.
Recently, American geneticists wrote a book called "Out of Africa: The Epic of the Migration of Human Ancestors", which uses genetic methods to study how the human species left Africa and first came to today's Israel, and then, part of it gradually moved to Asia, part of it went to Europe, etc.
By reading such migration and evolution, we can draw this simple conclusion: In the progress and development of civilization of species, the development of the brain provides a biological basis for language communication, which is a great contribution to genetic mutations.) Through cooperation and labor, people's comprehensive abilities are gradually complicated, and speaking skills are developed.
This skill has always occupied the most important aspect of daily information exchange and a quite important aspect of knowledge transmission in the long process of human development.
Until the industrial era of the 19th century, many people in developed Western countries could read and read.
Even so, a large amount of information was exchanged through mouth and ears.
We have textbooks, but textbooks may not make us knowledgeable people, so there is school education.
If everything can be accomplished by transmitting information in writing, then if the textbook is printed and sent to everyone, everyone will become very knowledgeable when reading at home.
Is this possible? It can be seen that in information transmission, face-to-face communication is irreplaceable.
In the development process of Eastern and Western nations, we can all see the main ways of storing and transmitting knowledge.
In Western civilization, such as the Alexandrian Library, one of the oldest libraries, such as the invention and use of movable type printing in Europe, as well as some ancient universities in Europe, etc., in this way, classics are preserved and civilization is inherited in written form.
But there is another aspect, just as there are two wheels that drive the progress of human civilization.
Written words, libraries and university education are one wheel, and folk culture is another wheel.
For thousands of years, people have transmitted a lot of knowledge and information through word of mouth.
Many things did not enter the written literary tradition, but were passed down from generation to generation among the common people.
A large number of things of the Chinese nation were passed down through this channel.
In the past, China had a large rural population, and the background of Chinese civilization was what rural grandparents, uncles, aunts, etc.
told you through word of mouth.
We know how to spend traditional festivals, and we know the story of Meng Jiangnu crying over the Great Wall.
Many stories in "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and "The Water Margin" have also been passed down in this way.
A considerable part of Chinese culture has no school education or library background.
Some ethnic groups have no written culture and are basically a wheel-only oral culture plays a role.
Take China as an example.
There are 55 ethnic minorities in China, so how many languages are there? There are many different opinions at present.
The language map compiled by UNESCO says that there are 300 languages in China.
Some domestic experts believe that the more accurate number is more than 130 languages.
Some ethnic groups speak more than one language, and some languages have not been recognized so far.
Language phenomena are relatively complex.
How many ethnic groups actually use their own language? There are less than 10 ethnic groups, and many ethnic groups have no written language.
So how did the civilization of these ethnic groups be passed down to this day? It's all through word of mouth.
If you want to trace the civilization process of various ethnic groups, in many cases it is not feasible to rely solely on words.
Some ethnic groups do not have written words, and their history of civilization and progress, local production knowledge and skills are all in oral traditions, in long narrative poems, ballads, proverbs.
Southern ethnic minorities such as the Miao, Yao, and Bai have all experienced complex migrations.
The records of their ancestors are all in oral traditions, which are very important to these ethnic groups.
Pursuing the "footprints" of oral tradition
The study of oral tradition began relatively late.
Although humans have a long history of speaking, we prefer to worship words.
In the tradition of Western civilization, if a person is a gentleman, he needs to have a high social status, be able to read, read, and be polite; in China, the same is true, a person to be a gentleman must read the books of sages and sages, be familiar with the Tao of Confucius and Mencius, etc.
The West began to pay attention to oral traditions and folk poetry may have been in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Why did it only start to care about it during this period? Because at this time, Europe began the capitalist revolution.
From the British enclosure movement to the invention and use of the steam engine, European social life changed greatly.
Take Germany as an example.
More and more people are leaving rural areas and entering cities.
Germany has begun to have large machines and industries.
Cultural people such as the Grimm Brothers began to worry that the new bourgeoisie had betrayed the German national spirit.
So, where was the German national spirit hidden? They said that it was hidden in the poems of farmers, but as a result, farmers left their land and became workers in cities.
What should we do? So they began to collect a large number of folk poems.
When folk poetry began to disappear, it was precisely when a few conscious and worried people who were afraid of the breaking of their national cultural traditions rose to work.
Brothers Grimm's "Grimm Fairy Tales" left us something of great cultural value.
It was not until the middle of the 20th century that classical scholars, communication scholars, structural anthropologists, and cultural scholars began to discuss the question: Human beings can write and speak.
What is the relationship between the two? What role does writing culture play in the progress of the human brain, mind and civilization? Regarding the latter, two schools of view have been formed in the academic community, which is known in history as the "big division theory." One school of view believes that human beings invented and used words, which is a huge progress and leap forward.
Human beings 'relatively complex and advanced activities such as high-power operations in mathematics and laws of logic have therefore received great support and development.
Others don't see it this way.
Like Strauss, he wrote books like "Wild Thinking" to study primitive people or contemporary non-written societies.
He believed that the use of words would have an effect on the complexity of the human mind, but the effect was not so great.
Even illiterate barbarians understood cause and effect and knew that if an object was pushed hard, the object would move.
Moreover, many nations have developed a lot of knowledge about natural science without writing.
He also learned to use natural resources, and also had the ability to calculate astronomical legislation, process, etc.
These studies have gradually revealed a rule: language and writing are two great things invented by mankind.
Writing is attached to language, and language is broader and more basic.
To this day, according to statistics, there are about 6000 languages in the world.
Conservatively speaking, there are more than 5000 languages, and there are less than 100 languages that are truly popular.
What does this mean? This shows that in various information exchanges in every corner of the earth, the main way is word of mouth rather than writing.
Of course, in the post-industrial era, the integration of global culture, economic development, and market integration are greatly squeezing these traditional cultures.
Many endangered small languages are rapidly disappearing.
According to statistics, on average, one language is lost every two days.
Many indigenous languages in the Amazon Basin of South America and the South Pacific Islands, and the languages of many tribes in Africa have disappeared before our eyes.
Recently, some statistics say that some ethnic minority languages in our country are also facing the crisis of disappearance, such as Hezhe language.
Only some experts and local folk inheritors in rescuing and protecting intangible cultural heritage are trying to save it.
In fact, languages of ethnic groups with small populations often face this situation.
Language is a tool for communication.
If the scope of use is too narrow, its foundation will become precarious, because the opportunities for you to communicate with members of your own nation will become scarce.
Currently, UNESCO has a special project on endangered languages.
Language is the most direct carrier of a nation's attributes.
With the disappearance of language, the spiritual world of this nation, the specific knowledge and skills it grasps about the universe and nature, such as medicine knowledge, mineralogy knowledge, botany knowledge, etc., will disappear accordingly.
Among the five categories of intangible cultural heritage classified by UNESCO, spoken language is particularly important.
A lot of folk knowledge is accomplished through oral tradition rather than written culture.
Maybe you farm land in Henan, or you herd horses in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
Where does your knowledge come from? Your father didn't give you a book about basic knowledge of farming, but he completed it through words and deeds in practice.
These things are not simple.
I have been to the countryside in Baiqi, Ximeng, Inner Mongolia, and know that raising a horse is extremely complicated: we have to observe the characteristics of the horse from childhood, from its bones and frame to coat color to family inheritance, so that we can choose a breed of male horse; When the horse is old to three or four years old, the horse must be trained; in summer, when the horse sweats, it must use a sweatboard to scrape the sweat; after running for a long time, the horse cannot immediately remove the saddle, etc.
These contents are rarely seen in books and are passed down from word of mouth.
Oral traditions also govern other categories, such as social practices, rituals, and festivals.
Many of the activities we see in the north and south of our country are passed down by word of mouth.
For example, the Miaofengshan Temple Fair in Beijing is achieved through oral tradition.
The same goes for other life knowledge.
If you are stung by a bee, you can pat an elm or poplar leaf on it to reduce the swelling, but it is difficult for you to find a "folk knowledge collection" that tells what to do if you are stung by a bee? How to bleed when you have heat stroke? What to do after encountering locusts? How to ask for rain without rain after a long drought? How did this knowledge come from? Many things are passed down by word of mouth, which is a characteristic of intangible cultural heritage.
They must be passed down from generation to generation through word of mouth and heart, and continue to grow, accumulate and develop.
Like knowledge trees, they have a very complex relationship with each other.
The growth of this knowledge, in turn, has brought a lot of knowledge and skills to our lives today.
Civilization and progress are a process of accumulation of knowledge.
Through long-term observation of nature and phenology, our ancestors gradually made crops high-yield and stable.
This is how the cultivation techniques of a large number of plants such as wheat and rice came about.
Not all life knowledge has textbooks.
Human knowledge is a vast ocean, and only a small part of it has entered textbooks, become written culture, and become classics.
Folk knowledge is huge.
We cannot cut off cultural inheritance or let a large amount of valuable knowledge disappear in the jungle of industrialized reinforced concrete, in today's classrooms, and in human memories.
Oral art and cultural identity
If language is only used to impart knowledge, it has not been fully developed.
In the long-term use of language by humans, a high degree of skill has been developed, called spoken language art.
We have poetry, long verse narratives and storytelling.
Here is an example.
On June 1 this year, a folk elderly man in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region who was famous for singing the epic of the Kirgiz people passed away.
Can you think of what happened to his death? The small town in his hometown had only 30,000 people.
The day after his death, the number of people in this small town increased by 5000.
These 5000 people were officials, scholars and people from home and abroad.
The President of neighboring Kyrgyzstan sent a delegation to Xinjiang to bid farewell to him.
Zhang Chunxian, Secretary of the Party Committee of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, sent a special message of condolence and sent senior government officials to his home to express condolences and visit.
Less than two weeks after his death, the National Theater of Kyrgyzstan held a grand memorial meeting to commemorate the old man's meritorious service and awarded him the title of Hero of the Kyrgyz People.
This title has never been given to foreigners in history.
This old man has a good memory.
He can sing eight "Manas", the first of which has as many as four volumes.
His stories can be sung endlessly for a long time.
How much does he have to remember in his mind to sing them out smoothly! This is a miracle of the human brain and a miracle of human language ability.
This is not a special example among folk artists in China in the 20th century.I once interviewed an old Xizang man who sang the Tibetan epic "Gesar." He was illiterate.
Before liberation, his family was poor and wandered around, making a living by performing epics.
After liberation, the party and the government thought that the epic "Gesar" was a treasure, so they invited him to Lhasa to sing.
Two young people recorded it for a year or two.
Our research institute cooperated with Xizang and wanted to publish his epic "Gesar".
As a result, only about 2/3 of his repertoire was published, and there were as many as 46 volumes! This length is almost 10 times that of "Dream of the Red Chamber".
Experts and scholars proficient in Tibetan were surprised after reading it.
The plot of "Gesar" is very tortuous, with vivid characters, complex plot conflicts, rich language, and beautiful tone.
If language art can reach a higher level after long-term evolution and development, this is one of the peaks of language art.
Through these phenomena, we can see what amazing heights folk knowledge will reach after it develops into highly developed art.
If you go a step further and talk about the vitality of these folk arts, such as the Tibetan epic "Gesar", you may say that isn't it the heroic story of heroes descending from heaven to eliminate violence and stabilize good, protect the people, and resist invasion? Is cultural value that great? After in-depth research, it was found that "Gesar" not only tells a story, but also an encyclopedia, which contains everything from astronomy to geography, from animals to plants, from history to culture, from society to the spiritual world, and belief systems.
If you want to understand Tibet, you must first understand these.
This is not a unique example.
For example, Indian epics are all-inclusive, including genealogy, myths, legends, stories, historical events, philosophical thoughts, religious spirit, and human relations.
They are the epitome of Indian civilization of that era and have been passed down for a long time.
Some Western scholars say that the light formation process is 800 years.
A great work has been formed for 800 years and passed down for nearly 2000 years.
Contemporary Indian scholars have been studying it for decades, but many things have not yet been clarified, which shows the complexity of the work.
If we want to understand ancient Indian society and culture, we must look at these things.
Not only us, but the Indians themselves must also look at these things.
Otherwise, how can we know what India was like a thousand years ago?
Oral tradition, after a long period of development, will develop complex art.
As we just mentioned, some outstanding artists can sing so many things, we need to answer a new question: How does he remember it without writing? It is necessary to study the way of oral communication and the form of expression.
There are skills involved.
After in-depth research, some scholars believe that these folk artists do not recite them word by word, but master the rules, which has developed the theory of oral formula.
When learning folk culture, you must first learn some fixed expressions, learn some description and description skills, and learn some skills to promote stories.
If you master too much of these things, you can create them on the spot.
Folk artists don't repeat ancient books exactly word for word every time, but tell a new story with roughly the same content every time.
This brings new problems to the study of oral literature: If you tell a story three times and the story is different, which time will prevail?
Through more in-depth research, we found that there are a large number of rules in folk knowledge, and stories are divided into three levels: the first level is the story model, which is either a wedding story, a battle process, a revenge story, or a home story.
There are not many types.
The second level is the theme, or the theme of the story, which enters into some relatively small units.
For example,"Heroes Hospitalize Guests" is a small theme, which talks about how heroes receive guests and how to prepare for a war, including saddles for horses, weapons and armor themes, etc.
The third level is the level of word syntax, that is, the large number of "formulations", or "routines", appear.
"Predict what will happen next, please listen to the next chapter" is a program.
There are not only procedures, but also changes.
Anyone who has watched the movie "Third Sister Liu" knows that singing with a scholar, you say one sentence after another, you come and go, you fight each other, sometimes you dance with a melody, and sometimes there are other ways.
Oral tradition is still cultural identity.
If you tell specific songs and stories in specific dialects and local accents, you will hear them very cordially, but others will probably not understand them.
At this time, a sense of cultural identity is built and we feel that we are closer.
A while ago, there were also activities to support Cantonese in Guangzhou, and many places protected their specific cultural colors by protecting their language.
Oral tradition is still national narrative or local knowledge.
The precipitation of local knowledge can be seen in a large number of oral traditions, such as knowledge of horse training, agricultural knowledge, and botany knowledge.
Knowledge is not external to us, it is with us.
Low-temperature superconductivity and genetic technology are far away from us, and daily life knowledge is not close to them, but we live in these traditional popular knowledge.
Folk knowledge is the soil in which we live, equivalent to air and water.
For example, we eat rice dumplings on the Dragon Boat Festival, make dumplings and set off firecrackers on the first day of the New Year, and climb high and admire chrysanthemums on the Double Ninth Festival.
We all follow folk knowledge.
Another characteristic is that people's knowledge is integrated with people.
Not all knowledge is like this, but folk knowledge is an oral tradition and is combined with people.
Some people have intangible cultural heritage, and no one has intangible cultural heritage.
If one day human species disappears, the pyramids of Egypt may still stand there.
The Great Wall of China is still experiencing wind and rain.
These are cultural relics; This is even more true for natural heritage.
From Huangshan to Jiuzhaigou, many things are created with the power of nature to create natural beauty.
presented to us.
But this is not the case with folk knowledge.
Folk knowledge has talents and knowledge and cannot be separated from others.
New problems arise for the preservation, research, inheritance and rejuvenation of knowledge.
The research work carried out by different disciplines may be different.
There are mainly such methods for folk research, such as questionnaires, observations, experiments, case methods, etc.
Biological research requires an organization, a slice, and a model, but folk knowledge is related to human emotions, beliefs and spirit.
At the same time, we must also pay attention to observation.
For example, if we want to understand how Hebei spends the New Year, then, I will go to Zhengding, Hebei to find a village to sit for a few days and remember clearly how this village spent it: How to sacrifice to the stove, how to kowtow to the ancestors, how to pay respects to the elderly, how to send red envelopes or reward money to the next generation, and how to prepare New Year's Eve dinner.
I have to make detailed records of these.
Only after I record them can I say that the Spring Festival is celebrated in a certain place in Zhengding, Hebei Province.
This is typical for celebrating the Spring Festival in the North China Plain.
Therefore, it is necessary to observe the most detailed details of people's lives through individual cases.