[Xu Zhiqiang] Theoretical thoughts on intangible cultural heritage protection
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Protecting non-material cultural relics (properties) seems to be a common saying, but when you look closely, there seems to be some incoherence between them.
There is naturally no problem in protecting heritage in material forms, such as natural heritage and cultural heritage; but the foundation of intangible cultural heritage lies in its intangible, intangible and spiritual nature.
How can it be protected? Of course, intangible cultural heritage uses various material media as carriers.
If these carriers do not exist, intangible cultural heritage does have nothing to attach to.
However, if intangible cultural heritage is equated with these carriers, and the protection of intangible cultural heritage is equated with the survival of these material carriers, it will inevitably make people sigh like Confucius: "Rites cloud cloud Therefore, the buzzword protecting intangible cultural heritage is still worth studying in detail.
The vast majority of intangible cultural heritage belongs to the artistic category, which is the starting point for our argument.
Intangible cultural heritage is divided into ten categories in China, namely folk literature, folk music, folk dance, traditional drama, folk art, acrobatics and competition, traditional handicrafts, traditional medicine, and folk customs.
Among them, the first six categories belong to art, and the last category of folk customs is also closely related to art.
The remaining three categories can roughly be attributed to the category of technology.
There is no doubt that technology can be protected.
As long as relevant knowledge can be passed on and the required conditions can be preserved, the intangible cultural heritage of technology can be effectively protected.
But as for art, can art be protected?
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Art is a manifestation of human values.
This is the essence of art and stipulates the relationship between art and people and the way people respond to art.
Moreover, we are not saying that art is valuable or useful; we are saying that art is a manifestation of value.
There are fundamental differences between these two statements.
Because human beings maintain their essence by value, and value is a category higher than human beings, just like the ancients said "Tao".
Then Tao is not something that I can play with, but a "destiny" that stipulates me and fulfills me.
This is what the "Doctrine of the Mean" so-called "destiny is called nature, and directness is called Tao." Only by abiding by these rules can people become real people-even if different nations and eras have specific differences in their understanding of these Tao.
But no matter what, people cannot be separated from value."Tao cannot be separated for a moment."
As the intangible cultural heritage of art, it is also a manifestation of human values, which contains human regulations, ideals, and standards.
Some of them are values from past times, some are values that are still appropriate today, and some are even eternal values.
It is precisely because of their value that they have been passed down as heritage and even left behind to this day.
For example, the national style of Chu Ci has been passed down for two thousand years, the Tang and Song Ci have been passed down for thousands of years, and the Shuimo Kunqu Opera has been sung for six hundred years.
It is precisely because of its value that as an enlightenment and a call to human nature, heritage is compared to people of different eras.
This is the same for both the ancients and the present.
However, we are not ignorant inheritors of heritage, nor can we be conscious inheritors of heritage.
Rather, it was (accidentally) through inheritance that generations of people discovered themselves first.
Just as Lin Daiyu heard the urgency of life from "The Peony Pavilion", we can also hear the rise and fall of the motherland in "Peach Blossom Fan".
The significance of heritage, tradition and classics lies in their enlightenment to human life.
It is precisely because of the enlightening value of heritage that heritage is accidentally or consciously passed down in this process-because generations of people have been moved by Tang and Song poems, Tang and Song poems have been passed down from generation to generation.
In other words, first of all,"Tao can promote people", and then people can promote Tao.
In this sense, Confucius's statement may not be correct.
Because truly accepting heritage and accepting real heritage is first of all an internal realization, not an external mission.
Therefore, we are not protectors of heritage, but recipients.
Because people are not the protectors of values, but the recognizers and realizers of values.
People can only kill themselves and sacrifice their lives for righteousness.
People are not the external protectors of value at all.
Therefore, intangible cultural heritage, as art and a manifestation of value, cannot be protected.
Moreover, the reason for calling for the protection of intangible cultural heritage should also be a value level reason, and it should be a higher value than the value of intangible cultural heritage itself.
But in any case, protection should not be called for reasons other than value.
But in today's popular discourse, are the reasons for protecting tradition sufficient and have higher value? For example, can we call for the protection of intangible cultural heritage on the grounds of "tradition","nationality" and "identity"? Does everyone have to protect Peking Opera just because it is the "quintessence of China"? Because it is "traditional culture", should we protect various local and niche cultural skills?
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But conversely, once people perceive the call of value in heritage, they will naturally approach intangible cultural heritage, appreciate it, and even be transformed by this culture, and eventually become inheritors of heritage.
Of course, times change and things change, and not all heritage can be passed on fortunately.
For example, no matter how sorry the good ones are, ancient folk music in the northwest such as Qin Opera, Hua 'er, Xian Xiao, Xiaoqu, storytelling, etc.
may not be able to reproduce its past glory.
For people who have grown up in an ever-changing era, there is a need for reasons to call on them to protect these traditions, but sometimes there is no need for another reason.
Su Yang, a fashionable rock singer born in the 1960s, began to mingle with storytellers, Qin Opera class owners, and Huaer singers in the mountains of northwest China when he reached middle age.
Zhang Gashi, a folk singer born in the 1990s, began to play Sanxian and sing northwest minor tunes in the city; he even visited more than 100 folk artists to record folk songs and learn to perform.
But it wasn't them who discovered the heritage, it was the heritage that discovered them.
We don't need to be grateful that intangible cultural heritage is protected because of them, but we should be grateful that their and our lives have become deeper because of these intangible cultural heritage.
In this sense, external protection is actually superfluous.
Therefore, the meaning and significance of heritage rejuvenation is not the external continuation of the heritage itself, but the internal generation of people transformed by tradition.
This also means that the rejuvenation of heritage fundamentally depends on the intrinsic process of people being moved by heritage.
The rise and fall of an art has always been closely related to the emergence and disappearance of artists.
When people survive, art thrives; when people die, art ceases.
It is regarded as the intangible cultural heritage of the project, but behind it are actually artists and even masters, or what Japan calls "national treasures on earth." The death of a master will not be enough for a rookie.
Even if intangible cultural heritage projects can be recorded in images and other forms, the revival of art itself is still unknown.
Therefore, the revival of heritage fundamentally depends on the artist, or more accurately, on the "temperament" of a certain artist.
The so-called artist temperament is the person who is most sensitive to the value in heritage; and the so-called artist is the person who is not only sensitive to this value, but also can activate value and create something in new situations, thus continuing the value.
This is what the ancients called "the belly is full of poetry and books." Therefore, the regeneration of heritage depends on those who are felt by value, at least those who are good and happy, rather than those who stand outside the value, such as managers and researchers.
Because these two postures both set a distance from the value contained in the heritage.
Of course, if managers and researchers can also feel and respect the value in various heritage, and a society where there are more and more people yearning for value, creating a gentle, honest, extensive and easy artistic atmosphere, it will indeed help the birth of artists and the revival of heritage.
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Of course, this does not mean that the revival of the legacy is pinned on the birth of a faint genius.
Because genius is not born indiscriminately.
Rather, geniuses are just those who carry out the call of value and the inner call to the end.
The so-called "not crazy, not alive," and artists are different from ordinary people precisely because they implement these values to even abnormal and abnormal levels.
But this persistence should not be due to external reasons or responsibilities.
Artists often say that "art is greater than heaven", first of all because they have discovered their inner destiny in art that is worth adhering to, so that they are willing to overcome the hardship of "one minute on stage, ten years off stage".
Therefore, for intangible cultural heritage, the artist is first saving himself, and tradition is born.
Moreover, this kind of investment is not the so-called ingenuity at all-ingenuity without reason.
Because ingenuity is not an external effort, but an internal redemption.
Craftiness does not mean painstaking efforts.
No matter how hard slaves work, they will not have ingenuity.
Because the essence of art should be to achieve life, self and adulthood.
Moreover, artistic achievement requires not only external training, but also internal training.
This kind of tempering is not just pain, but real joy.
But the pain of life is often a necessary catalyst for the achievement of art and artists.
Real art was born out of poverty, and the ancients had long known the pathos of this.
Therefore, Sima Qian said that Qu Yuan was banished because he wrote "Li Sao"; Zuoqiu was blind and had "Guoyu." The poet Rilke said,"There is always some ancient hostility between life and great works." Because only when life hangs on a thread, can art, as salvation, unleash extraordinary power.
Therefore, what makes a master a master is often the unexpected hardships and sorrows that no one wants to suffer.
Many times we can find that the fate trajectories of masters in different fields often have extremely surprising similarities.
For example, he is talented, he becomes famous when he is young, encounters twists and turns in his middle age, and is difficult for years.
In his old age, his art often reaches a higher level and is even perfected.
As Du Fu said,"Yu Xin is the most miserable in his life, and his poetry in his old age moves Jiangguan." This is the case for Mr.
Ren Zhezhong, who is known as the "young man" in the Qin Opera world.
Because of the frequent performances in his middle age, Mr.
Ren's voice became hoarse, and his spirit was greatly damaged through social unrest.
However, after his comeback, he used a green voice that no one could learn, making "Zhou Ren Returns to the Mansion" a final song.
After Mr.
Wang died in Xi'an in 1995, it was said that the condolence team caused traffic jams, and even the audience who liked him formed a band of 100 people from Xianyang to express their condolences.
Just as some media praised it at the time as "Liyuan Zhiming", Mr.
Ren devoted himself to art with deep affection, which moved thousands of people and achieved the peak of Qin Opera art.
As art, intangible cultural heritage is so paradoxical, paradoxical and unreasonable that it cannot be protected in a stable and safe position.
In South Korean director Lin Kwon Taek's film "A Sorrowful Song"(1993) describing the traditional Korean rap "Pansori", there is a plot in which the master blinded the female singer in order to make her the best "Pansori" singer.
When the director remade "Millennium Crane" on the same theme in 2005, he retained this plot.
This is naturally a fable, and a senior film artist is familiar with it, but it is also a dangerous fable.
Because art itself is a danger, it requires people to give up some worldly stability to achieve it-they must first be blind and then they can see.
These two works by Director Lin deal with the dilemma of traditional Korean art at that time (1950s) and the artist's tragic persistence.
The topics are the same as current popular opinion in China, such as the movie "Hundred Birds Frying to the Phoenix." But the logic inside is worth studying deeply.
On the surface, the dilemma of these folk artists is due to the tension between tradition and modernity; deeper, it is a dilemma between food and art; but fundamentally, it is the eternal ups and downs of human nature between wanderings and return, between worldly and sacred.
If you dare not face danger, you will not be able to see the mountains and rivers.
There is no stable position in the present world, allowing people to talk lightly about art, intangible cultural heritage, and protection.
What can be easily protected must not be the greatest art.
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The so-called intangible cultural heritage is for it to be a way, not a tool.
Lao Tzu said that jade is regarded as a tool, and it is regarded as a tool.
Therefore, it cannot be used as a tool to "become the Tao".
Of course,"the Tao is not an instrument, but it is not an instrument, and it is not an instrument, but it is not an instrument that can be protected"(Zhu Xi).
However, it is always the instrument, not the Tao.
As mentioned above, the path to the Tao is arduous and paradoxical.
If there is no consciousness of this paradox, there is no courage to devote to the intrinsic value of intangible heritage and Changyan protection, it is doomed to be a kind of decoration and catching wind and catching shadows.
Today's intangible cultural heritage, mostly appear in tourism occasions.
This is an allegory.
Tourists like intangible cultural heritage enthusiasts only glance at the scenes, marvel and then forget them in a flash.
This does not matter.
If managers and researchers engage in intangible cultural heritage undertakings with a protective mentality, the results are bound to be completely different.
Perhaps data has increased, activities have been frequent, and research has flourished, but the spirit of intangible cultural heritage has not necessarily been promoted.
Of course, if managers and researchers can at least recognize the value of heritage, even if they cannot, they yearn for it, protect the material carrier of intangible cultural heritage with all their heart, and pretend to treat those who come, they can also achieve a humble and honest career.
The most terrifying thing is that they live in groups all day long, talk about righteousness, but they guide the country and are fearless of adults, which can only increase obstacles for real career seekers.
In short, if heritage is a concept smaller than me, then heritage can indeed be protected, but it requires a value reason; if heritage is a concept larger than me, then it is the value itself, and I cannot protect it outside it.
Heritage on the value level, like the ritual mentioned by Confucius, is to me "if you gain it, you will live, if you lose it, you will die." It requires our inner transformation and does not allow us to watch and choose.
Furthermore, those who achieve enlightenment will suffer their will and work hard their bones.
In common sense, people are afraid of and avoid them.
How can we protect so lightly? I don't know the dangers of it, but I try to implement external protection quietly, either I buy a treasure to return to the pearl and return to the sky, or I am arty and like dragons, and eventually I am separated from the spirit of the heritage.
(The original text is published in the late 2020 issue of Literary Education.
Please refer to the original text for relevant annotations.)