RESCUE THE OTHER HALF OF CHINESE CULTURE

文：西贝

Since 1994, Feng Jicai, a noted writer in China, has got 100 cameramen to take sweeping photos of almost every object of his hometown - the old city of Tianjin, for which he has spent hundreds of thousands of yuan from his royalties. He did so because he was strongly worried about the status quo of national and folk culture, which he believes is on the verge of extinction in the shadow of modern style of living. Initiated by Feng, the China Folk Artists Association has launched a project to rescue the state class folk culture. The costly project, estimated to take ten years to complete, is the biggest of its kind to preserve folk culture in China. It indicates that Feng’s worries have become the worries of the Chinese government as well.

“The culture of the Chinese nation in which we take great pride is made up of two parts: the elite and classics, and the folk culture. The two parts are of equal importance and one cannot take the place of the other. ...... If we say that the spirit and thought of our Chinese nation are inherent in the elite and classics of our culture, the sentiments and individuality of the Chinese nation are expressed sharply and directly in the folk culture. That is why we say that folk culture is the other half of the Chinese culture.”

These remarks are made by Feng Jicai, a cultural scholar, a writer, a painter and president of the China Folk Artists Association. He is outstanding in taking the folk culture so seriously and regarding folk culture as the other half of the Chinese culture.

“Due to historical bias, folk culture has never been treated equally with the elite culture. On the contrary, it is even dismissed as something primitive and spontaneous. That is why there are no written records about it, and it is barred from museums and exhibitions and it has to be passed on from generation to generation in such feeble methods of oral teaching that inspires true understanding from within. Once the last man who can relate it is gone, it is like a kite with the string broken, that is, it would disappear instantly and come to nothing. The way that folk culture survives has been one that is subject to fate.”

It is just because of this, Feng Jicai has cried for rescuing the other half of the Chinese culture.

If all the streets and lanes in Chinese cities had turned into “Italian Garden”, “Rome Plaza” or “Mini-world of Venice”, how pathetic it would be for a country with profound culture!

Feng Jicai is a writer who has the most profound understanding of folk culture of a nation. In recent years, he has been watching closely the destiny of folk culture of the Chinese nation under the impact of modernity and modern way of living. “Countless folk artists are passing away silently, taking away with them a special part of folk culture!” Everywhere large numbers of historical residences have been pulled down and traditional names of streets and lanes have been changed by property developers into “Italian Garden”, “Roman Plaza” or “Venice Mini-World”. The rural peasants, from south to north, who have become wealthier, have put up their new houses in western style. “There is not a trace of China left,” Feng laments.

China is in for an era of profound and sweeping changes. In the context of economic globalization, the indigenous culture of all ethnic groups in the country is facing unrivalled challenges. The challenges confronting this country of ancient civilization are even graver. On the one hand, with the acceleration of industrialization and urbanization, all the forms and methodology of culture in the framework of farming civilization are fast disintegrating and dying away; on the other hand, the commercial culture that is in fashion throughout the world is eroding violently the folk culture. Although the progress of social transition is unquestionable, the loss of the cultural heritage of mankind and historical wealth is in all ways something moanful for human civilization. That is why UNESCO has in recent year given special attention to the rescue and preservation of oral and non-material culture heritages.

Feng holds that the heritage of Chinese folk culture is the carrier of the national spirit, sentiments, morals and tradition, individuality and rallying power and affinity of the Chinese nation and also the spiritual source and foundation of advanced culture and the development of the Chinese nation and even constitutes solid spiritual contents that is indispensable in the comprehensive national strength. However, due to the long negligence to the folk culture and the absence of the recognition that it is the other half of the Chinese culture, the academic circles in the present-day China do not have a clear understanding of or clear idea about the general situation of folk culture. There is even no knowledge about how much this wealth of civilization has got lost.

“Lift your feet on this land of China, you would see that our people are living in their own culture. But at present, many valuable folk arts are on the verge of extinction, dying away with each death of a folk artist. This takes place every minute in our fields, in mountain valleys and ravines and there are ancient villages with unique landscapes vanishing instantly. They are dying away silently, just like clouds that are dispersed.

“If we do not set out on our rescue mission, there would be at least half of the folk culture vanishing in another two decades, “ Feng Jicai warns.

In fact, what he worries about are finding echoes in an increasing number of people in the culture field. That is why his call for rescuing folk culture has won extensive responses as well as the approval and encouragement by the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the Ministry of Culture, the State Ethnic Affairs Commission and the Chinese Federation of Literature and Arts.

In 2003, the Chinese government officially kicked off the project for protecting the folk cultural heritage of the Chinese nation. The mammoth project has been listed as a major project for implementation. The project will include a general survey and rescue in a scale that has never been seen of the folk cultural heritage of China’s 56 ethnic groups. The China Association of Folk Arts and Literature led by Feng undertakes the biggest part of this state class project.

Urgent! No waiting, not even for a day!

Folk culture is scattered in every corner of the society, like a vast ocean. It is generally divided into three major categories: folk customs and culture, folk literature and folk arts. The rescue project will mainly carry out a general survey of folk arts, including folk paintings, sculptures, costumes, architecture, arts and crafts and utensils. Folk literature includes fairy tales, legends, stories, fables, jokes, songs and rhymes, narrative poems, epic, ballads, proverbs, idioms, two-part allegorical saying (with the first descriptive part stated, leaving the second part unstated, carrying the message), riddles, folk ballad singing literature and folk theatrical literature. Folk culture refers to customs in material production, material life, social organizations, festivals, rituals and etiquette, folk beliefs, folk science and technology, oral literature, local dialects, arts, games and entertainment. No systematic survey on and registration of the folk culture that has been passed on from generation to generation for the last thousands of years has been conducted.

As an executor of the project, the China Association of Folk Arts and Literature has decided to carry out a comprehensive, thorough and blanket survey and rescue of the cultural heritage of the 56 ethnic groups throughout China.

The rescue project covers: survey, registration, classification, sorting out and publishing.

The motto of the project is: getting clear about what we have, sorting out the heritages, protecting the resources and carrying forward what is the best.

The rescue work will use the modern means, including writing, photographing and video recording in carrying out the survey and save what is found in digitized archives. Several tens of thousands of art and literature workers will participate in the project.

The objects for rescue: folk customs, folk literature and folk arts (mainly fine arts). All the objects, from such big ones as ancient villages down to such small thing as scented pouch, will be covered by the rescue operation.

As the folk culture is losing and dying away fast, it is extremely urgent for the rescue operation and there should be not a day to lose.

That is why the China Association of Folk Arts and Literature has over the past one year and a half made repeated emergency calls, appealing to the whole society to carry out emergency rescue of the folk culture on the verge of extinction.

Another leader of this project is Bai Gengsheng, vice-chairman of the China Association of Folk Arts and Literature and noted scholar of the Naxi, a minority in the southwest. We have this heavy cultural “cross” on our shoulder, he says. And we shall in no circumstances put it down. We have set our foot down to carry the work through to the end until the “other half of the Chinese culture” - this massive cultural heritage and wealth of civilization - is put in order in its completeness for the people to see and touch.