Glimpses of New Directions in Chinese Folkloristics

Western Folklore Volume 81 • Number 2-3 Spring/Summer 2022 Special Issue: New Directions in Chinese Folkloristics Published by the Western States Folklore Society ©2022 by the Western States Folklore Society ISSN 0043-373X CONTENTS A RT I C L E S Editorial Preface to New Directions in Chinese Folkloristics Anthony Bak Buccitelli . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Introduction: Glimpses of New Directions in Chinese Folkloristics Juwen Zhang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Developing Chinese Folkloristics: Experience and Reflection Fang Xiao and Chen Jia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 A Centennial Overview of Folklore Studies at Sun Yat-sen University Xiaochun Liu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 The Integration of Scholarly and Local Perspectives in Writing Village Minsuzhi in Contemporary China Shishan Zhang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 A Turn Toward Practice in Chinese Folkloristics: A Reflection on the Concept Through Fieldwork Xi Ju . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Safeguarding Festivals: Reflections on the Training Workshop for Young ICH Bearers Shaoya He and Xia Zhu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 The Mechanism of Maintaining Identity: Applying the Rites de Passage in the “Replacing Village Heart” of a Dai Village in China Wenzaixiang Yan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 From “Recognizing the Temple but not the Grave” to Recognizing Both: A Study of the Change of Funeral Culture of the Deang People Wei Xiong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 The Contemporary Practice of the Double Seventh Festival in Northwest China Huijie Zhao . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 Mythologism in the Context of Heritage Tourism: An Ethnographic Study of Tour Guides’ Myth-telling Performances in Northern China Lihui Yang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 On the Subjects of Intangible Cultural Heritage Practice and Protection Chengyan Han . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 R E V I E W E S S AY Shishan Zhang张士闪, Li yu su: zai tianye zhong lijie Zhongguo 礼与俗：在田野中理解中国 [Ritual and Custom: Understanding China in Fieldwork]. Reviewed by Wei Liu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 Introduction Glimpses of New Directions in Chinese Folkloristics Juwen Zhang The “new directions,” in this limited issue, are discussed by scholars from China. They mainly refer to these aspects: some theoretical discourses on the discipline of folkloristics (minsuxue xuekexing) and practical folkloristics (shijian minsuxue); applying folkloristic expertise in social reform, particularly in rural governance (xiangcun zhili); writing about village folklore (cunluo minsuzhi) and engaging in local policymaking; probing the use of a “grand theory” in an analysis of a village ritual; changes in and conflicts involving the traditions between the majority Han group and the minority groups (shaoshu minzu); and reflective thoughts on the movement of safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) in China. It may immediately seem familiar that Chinese folklorists are talking about a disciplinary identity issue that was debated in the 1980s and 1990s in the US, and that they are talking about “practice,” which is also discussed in current American folklore scholarship. However, even though the terms or problems may seem similar, the nature and impact of these are very Juwen Zhang is Professor of Chinese and Folklore, Willamette University, Oregon, USA. Western Folklore 81.2-3 (Spring/Summer 2022): 117-143. Copyright © 2022. Western States Folklore Society 118 JUWEN ZHANG different, as is briefly discussed below. Further, terms like rural governance and village minsuzhi (see the Glossary below) may sound as conceptually remote as China is geographically remote from any folklore program in the US or Europe. Clearly, folklore studies in China are as diverse as folklore practices in different societies.1 Precisely for this reason, this special issue is designed to provide the latest snapshot of fast-growing folkloristics in China, while paving the way for further discourse at both theoretical and practical levels between folklorists inside and outside China. While the pieces included in this issue have, to a certain extent, covered those topics mentioned above, this introduction adds more background information on the following subjects: recent publications about Chinese folklore studies in English; new developments in the past seventy years in China; issues in translating Chinese concepts and terms; and a glossary necessary to understand Chinese folkloristic developments.2 R E C E N T P U B L I C AT I O N S O N C H I N E S E F O L K L O R E SCHOLARSHIP IN ENGLISH In the past two decades, folkloristics in China has developed at a pace and scale that no other country has matched in terms of the formation and expansion of graduate programs and in terms of involvement in local and national policymaking. For example, each year, dozens graduate with PhDs and hundreds with MAs in folklore from about five dozen folklore programs across the country. These numbers do not include the dozens who also graduate with MAs in Cultural Industry Management. While there are many reasons for this flourishing, one specific factor may be Chinese folklorists’ access to publications and conferences, as well as online resources, from outside China. Both the foreign language skills of Chinese scholars and the availability of translations from other languages into Chinese enable folklorists in China to read widely in the scholarship of international folkloristics. My personal experience in dealing with Chinese folklore students in the past tells me that almost I NTRODUCTION 119 every folklore graduate student can easily name twenty international folklorists and their major works. In this regard, it is sad for both Chinese and non-Chinese folklorists that the publications or other resources about Chinese folklore studies composed in other languages are very limited. I would venture that a typical folklore graduate student in the US might not be able to name three Chinese (or even Asian) folklorists, let alone discuss their works or ideas. This unfortunate reality suggests that efforts have to be made by all parties. Chinese folklorists need to publish or twice-publish their works in foreign languages; non-Chinese folklorists should try to learn to read Chinese, as hundreds (if not thousands) of anthropologists, historians, and scholars in other fields are doing. Certainly, publishing translations is another important way to bridge this gap, in addition to interpersonal communication, or what I have called “metafolklore” between Chinese and American folklorists (Zhang and Song 2017). Here are some examples from the past decade: On the construction of the discipline of folkloristics in China, a special issue of the journal of Asian Ethnology is working “toward disciplinary maturity” of Chinese folklore studies (Li 2015) and contains a few case studies by Chinese folklorists; there is also a general survey of folklore in China (Zhang 2018) and a collection of essays on “discourse and practice” through case studies (Zhang and You 2019). On the subject of safeguarding intangible cultural heritage (ICH) (which has been, to a certain degree, bound to folklore studies in China), previous special issues of Western States Folklore cover the essentials of ICH in China (Zhang and Zhou 2017); Asian Ethnology discusses ICH “in transition” (You and Hardwick 2020) and “contested tradition” and heritage (You 2020). There are also studies of material culture as ICH, such as the papercuts (Bodelec 2012) and quilts of southwest China (MacDowell and Zhang 2016). Studies of different genres of folk narrative and performance include works on folk and fairy tales in relation to media: for 120 JUWEN ZHANG example, a comprehensive anthology of folk and popular literature (Mair and Bender 2011) and a collection of essays on folk performing arts (Gibbs 2019). In addition, there are studies of specific issues such as tale type ATU 930A (Zhang 2014), epics from southwest China (Bender 2016), folktale films (Li 2016), fairy tales in China (Zhang 2019), “rediscovering the Brothers Grimm of China” (Zhang 2020b), and proverb studies toward the creation of a paremiology (Cui 2019, An 2021, Chen 2021, Zhang 2021). Certainly, there are more publications about Chinese folklore studies in English, but a general problem now is the lack of thematic or systemic publication on the theory and methodology developed by Chinese folklorists collectively, as well as by influential individuals (e.g., Zhong Jingwen [19032002], who is hailed as the father of modern Chinese folkloristics). With a more thematic or systemic introduction, Chinese folklore scholarship can be better understood by non-Chinese readers with updated and accurate information, rather than some case studies that can be easily if falsely generalized (e.g., given the diversities of region, language, and religion in China). As a result, an equal and mutually constructive discourse will contribute to folkloristics as a discipline. SOME NEW DIRECTIONS DEVELOPED IN THE PAST SEVENTY YEARS While academic folklore studies took root in China in the 1910s, constant wars and social unrest in the following three decades essentially halted the development of the field. It is since 1949, with the New China, that a new historical and social environment for the Chinese to gain awareness of their own cultural roots and pay attention to the traditions practiced by the common people has developed. However, beginning in the 1950s and early 1960s, this was interrupted by the internal social turbulence of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and was not resumed until 1983, when the China Folklore Society was founded. Yet folklore (or folk literature) has been used as a part of nation-building and root-seeking for the past seventy years, I NTRODUCTION 121 even though the discipline itself was halted in the same way as other disciplines. For example, storytelling and folk literature were highly promoted during the Cultural Revolution by emphasizing the revolutionary aspect of those traditions. A series of publications in 2019 and 2020 has reflected on various topics in Chinese folkloristics in the past seventy years. For example, there are a number of reviews of the progress of past years in specific areas, including the study of legends (Wang 2019), rural social governance (Sun and Xiao 2019), epics (Bamoqubumo 2019), and mythology (Tan 2019); there were also broader reviews of work on “folk literature” (Gao 2019) and the history of folklore studies (Ye 2019). The review by Fang Xiao and Chen Jia in this issue is an example of this trend, as the authors survey the development of Chinese folkloristics, highlighting some new developments in recent years and reflecting on the achievements and shortcomings of folklore studies. Two events are also worth mentioning. In the summer of 2019, the conference “Chinese Folkloristics in 70 Years: Disciplinary Development and Discourse System Construction Symposium” was held in Beijing, sponsored by the Minzu University of China in conjunction with the China Folklore Society. In October 2019, the China Folklore Society’s annual meeting was held in Jinan, Shandong Province, with the theme “Retrospect and Prospect: Chinese Folkloristics in 70 Years.”3 This meeting signaled a disciplinary turn in folkloristics in China, from its past emphasis on folk literature and text-centered studies to more diverse approaches that consider folklore as part of the everyday life of common people. This introduction highlights a few specific new directions of Chinese folklore studies, as a background for understanding the essays in this issue. Besides the issues already discussed in various degrees (e.g., disciplinarity of folkloristics, folklore versus folk literature, as mentioned above), the following three areas are of particular importance in the context of international folkloristic discourse: a debate on the concepts of “practice” 122 JUWEN ZHANG and “everyday life” in folklore studies; the roles of folklore in “rural social governance” and folklorists in local and national policymaking; and the construction of the concept and practice of minsuzhi. These areas are yet to be systematically theorized by Chinese folklorists, and are hardly mentioned in any English-language publications: The debate about the concepts of “practice” and “everyday life” has much to do with the Chinese translations and the semantic issue of Chinese words/characters (e.g., a character can be used as different parts of speech and can denote different meanings depending on the syntax). For example, “folk-lore” (or folklore) is now called min su (民俗) in Chinese (though the two characters were directly borrowed from Japanese translation of “folklore”), in which the character min (folk) refers to “common people” in contrast to guan (officials), and su (lore) means “custom” as a noun, or “vulgar” as an adjective. Min in this context may mean jianmin (贱民, low-class people, who could not even be seen as peasants in the old societies), or pingmin (平民, common people, who are peasants or urban dwellers). Similarly, chuan tong (传统, tradition) in classical Chinese indicates two actions: “to pass down or to; to hand over” (chuan) and “to unify many into one” (tong). In this sense, chuan-tong contains not only the meaning of tradere (to hand over or deliver) as in the Latin root, but also a layer of meaning of “unifying or synthesizing many into one.” This extra layer of meaning is not expressed in traditio (the process) or traditum (for the thing transmitted), regardless of whether the “thing” is of value. Thus, the Western tradition emphasizes the process of transmitting a thing or the value of the thing (Bronner 2019:43), whereas the Chinese chuan-tong implies a certain way of transmitting things. That is, in Chinese history, traditions have been essentially centered on Confucian ethics as the ruling ideology in maintaining the unity of Chinese culture as a whole for the past millennia (Zhang 2022). The semantic dimension has much to do with the translation and interpretation of the meaning behind the terms, in I NTRODUCTION 123 particular, shijian (实践 practice) and richang shenghuo (日 常生活everyday life). Clearly, these two loaned concepts contain not only European historical and social backgrounds but also a philosophical veil. That is, these concepts have been dominated by the interpretations from a Kantian (not postKantian) view of “pure reason” and “a priori knowledge” regarding the ultimate “ends/goals” of human practice. In this vein, folklorists Lü Wei and Hu Xiaohui have advocated a shijian minsuxue (practice folkloristics) to urge folklorists to question the very “end/goal” of practice, which is essentially about the purpose and right of living a life for a human being (Hu 2013; 2017; Lü 2018). This idea emphasizes the investigation of the purpose of people practicing traditions, while the process of practicing is only the means to reach that goal. This approach attempts to integrate the idea of “performance” with “Chinese characteristics” (that is, adapting the “performance-centered approach” developed in the US to an understanding of Chinese realities) (Wang 2018; 2019; 2021). Furthermore, this approach stimulated questions about whose practice folklorists should study, who has the right to define and manipulate the everyday life of the common people, and how common people should be seen as citizens of modern society, rather than as jianmin or pingmin who are deprived of their rights to be equal individuals in the society (Gao 2015a; 2015b), Gao further argues that studying the “everyday life of the citizen” should be seen as the “new era of Chinese folkloristics” (Gao 2015a:5) because “folk” has three levels of meanings, and it is at this time in Chinese history that the meaning of gongmin (公民 citizen, beyond jianmin and pingmin) should be emphasized. Since then, everyday life has become the focal point of theoretical discussions and debates regarding the current academic status and orientation for the future of folklore studies as a discipline. Should the study of everyday life be the ultimate end/goal of folklore studies or the means to reach certain other goals (e.g., as folklore was used in Germany in the nineteeth century, 124 JUWEN ZHANG and Japan in the early twentieth century for nation-building)? Several seminars and conferences were held dealing with this central question (Gao 2017), which also extends or returns to the very question about the nature of folklore practice and folklore studies, or minsu xing (民俗性, folkloricity), which differentiates folklore as the essence of common people’s everyday, meaningful life from folklore as the means for political or other control (Liu 2019). What seems striking is that, in the early twentieth century when folklore studies were introduced to China, folklorists (along with other intellectuals) were seeking the reconstruction of Chinese national identity through a restoration of the guocui (国粹,national essence) by looking at the traditions carried orally by the common people.4 However, that idea was implemented through “text-centered” studies: that is, while the oral tradition was emphasized by collecting folklore, the people who told the tales were not given relevant attention. “Common people” were clearly looked down on by the intellectuals who studied the content (as text) of their folk narratives or songs. However, a century later, seemingly similar questions about Chinese national identity have reexamined the social status and the political rights of the common people and appealed for the recognition of the “lower class” or “peasants” as the equals of urban residents, as gongmin (citizens); this concept advocates individuals’ constitutional rights through folklore studies, rather than ignoring the common people’s rights for the sake of nation-building. Bingzhong Gao, a leading folklorist in China, argues that Chinese folkloristics, as part of international folkloristics, should learn from the West, but should lay a firm foundation in Chinese history and culture, and proceed along three lines: first, to rediscover its own philosophical roots to gain respect from other disciplines and to engage in public affairs; second, to investigate the realities of Chinese society by shifting focus from “lore” to “folk” and from “margin” to the “center” of social and political life in order to engage in social construction; and third, I NTRODUCTION 125 to adopt the ancient view of fengsu (风俗,folk custom) holistically, while still learning from Europe (Gao 2015a; 2015b). To a certain extent, his idea about “negotiation through folklore in the world society” also echoes these three representative new directions in Chinse folkloristics: • engaging in a world that is no longer based on the static view of folk group • joining the world society so as to rethink the relations between “us” and “them” • learning to negotiate through folklore in social life by emphasizing the role of “folk” • engaging in the negotiation of folklore in social governance at state level • seeking liberty of folklore through folklore negotiation, and • laying the foundation of folkloristics with the negotiability of folklore (Gao 2020). Clearly, Chinese folkloristics must be based on Chinese history and social reality, but it also is part of international folkloristics. The second direction concerns research topics on ICH and “rural social governance” in villages. ICH-related topics or projects have been dominant in folklore studies in China in the past 15 years or so; one effect of this emphasis (among many) is the attention to villages (cunluo), especially those that are designated as ancient villages (gu cunluo). Chinese folklorists have always focused on village life rather than urban streets or residents. This has been true not just in the past century when folklore gained status as an academic field, but also over the last two thousand years, when collecting customs (caifeng) was used as a tool of social governance. But when the formerly relatively stable rural population began to diminish from 86% of the population in the 1950s to 36% 126 JUWEN ZHANG in 2021, social issues surrounding urbanization and other reforms became pressing.5 Subsequently, through national policies of “social governance,” which were effective in the past decades, China began to highlight “rural governance.” This policy shift took place in the past decade or so when folkloristics happened to also experience an administrative shift at many Chinese universities— from being categorized as a discipline under literature to one under sociology. At Beijing Normal University, for example, while the Folklore Program continues to be placed under the School of Language and Literature, the Department of Folklore (a different unit) was moved to the School of Sociology (also referred to as the Chinese Academy of Social Management). Similar shifts have also occurred with several other Folklore Programs or Departments at other universities. This fact objectively enabled the shift in folklore research focus from a textcentered literary approach to practice-based application, as discussed in the first four essays in the volume. Attention to villages from the government has been a common practice throughout Chinese history. However, the difference now is that villages are no longer seen as the sources of food or social stability as a whole, and villagers are gaining as much social and legal status as urban residents. For example, beginning in 2006, Chinese peasants stopped paying land tax, which was collected by governments for the past thousands of years. Villagers are now seen as the bearers of Chinese traditions, especially through the ICH movement. For these reasons, Chinese folklore studies have also paid special attention to rural governance, more or less as the practice of public folklore sector with “Chinese characteristics,” or a Chinese applied folklore. Such efforts have been further encouraged by the ICH movements across China. As discussed in three essays by the authors from Beijing Normal University, the faculty and students of the folklore program there are not only getting involved in rural governance as a route to practical research projects, but also using this as a way to ponder the future of folklore I NTRODUCTION 127 research in terms of advocating social harmony, individual and group identity, and the modernization of village life. The third new direction is the redefinition of the meaning of fieldwork and the writing of village minsuzhi 民俗志. Academic studies of Chinese villages from anthropological, sociological, and folkloristic viewpoints began in the early twentieth century, represented by the works of those who studied in Europe and introduced sociology and anthropology to China. Fei Xiaotong’s (1910-2005) dissertation (Fei 1939), a case study of a village under the guidance of Bronislaw Malinowski, is an example of ethnography from that period, which has influenced village studies in China until today. Another major influence was Kunio Yanagita’s folkloristic investigation of villages in Japan (Zhou 2005; Lu 2018). Chinese folkloristic attention to villages began in the 1990s, when economic reform mobilized the rural population to move to urban centers, but it became most significant with the rise of the ICH movement after 2004. Through central government projects intended to revitalize traditions, national “historical villages” and “traditional villages” have been designated, along with attempts to industrialize the production of local handcrafts, now designated as ICH, in order to boost the local economy and build social harmony.6 The most direct factor in the rise of minsuzhi is the desire to move away from “ethnography” (minzu zhi 民族志; in which minzu is about “ethnicity” or “nationality”) (Liu 1998; Gao 2007; Bamoqubumo 2007). While zhi in Chinese can be generally understood as “annals” or “-graphy” (as in ethnography), the term “ethno-” began to be problematized by Chinese folklorists in the 1990s. Two issues are involved: one is that ethnography bears the hallmarks of European colonialist history and ideology (Clifford and Marcus 1986); the other is the content and method of writing “ethnography” in a European sense. In Chinese, minzu is a new concept introduced from Europe at the turn of the twentieth century, which now is used for both the Chinese as a nation and each ethnic group as a minority. 128 JUWEN ZHANG This usage complicates Chinese domestic and international discourses on cultures and traditions about a single ethnic group and/or Chinese culture as a whole (Zhang 2020a). Thus, minsuzhi has been used by more and more Chinese folklorists. This shift toward minsuzhi also reflects a shift in methodological thinking. For example, Shishan Zhang in this issue discusses such ideas as “going to the people/folk,” “going along with the people/folk,” “collecting and leaving,” and “bringing awareness to the practitioners of the importance of their practice” as examples of this range of concepts The idea of writing village minsuzhi based on experienced-centered fieldwork is reflected in a series of works (Zhang Shishan 2019) that have been described as representing a “school of Chinese folkloristics” (Zhonguo minsu xuepai) (Liu 2020:1) or a Chinese “school of field methods” (tianye xuepai) (Huang 2020:3; Liu 2020). Therefore, the shift from “ethnography” to minszuhi is not only about bringing Chinese characteristics to folklore studies, but also a meaningful paradigm shift in terms of methodology as well as ideology. This shift illustrates the idea of “folkloric identity:” Folklore studies should not begin by looking at the people’s minzu (nationality, ethnicity, or race), but at the inherent meaning that connects different people together to form folk groups or villages (Zhang 2020a). As a result, there has been a wave of folkloristic research, mostly at village levels (Liu 2013). The largest series of publications bearing the term minsuzhi is the Shanxi Province Annals: Folkloregraphy (Minsuzhi), which will include eighty-nine volumes (fifty-two have been published as of 2018). E F F O R T S T O WA R D N E W D I R E C T I O N S P R E S E N T E D IN THIS ISSUE The ten essays in this issue present new directions and developments in Chinese folklore studies. There is no doubt that the increasing number of folklorists in China with cross-disciplinary backgrounds and research interests in diverse traditions at home and abroad will result in more significant contributions I NTRODUCTION 129 to international folkloristics. But the barrier to international discourse is also clear: Chinese folklorists have read much more about international scholarship through Chinese translations than the rest of the world has about Chinese folklore studies, while their own works are disproportionally underpublished in non-Chinese languages. The current issue is just one step forward to improve the situation from both sides and, hopefully, is a signal of change. In this regard, I applaud the editors of Western States Folklore: Tok Thompson, for his enabling of the special issue on Chinese folkloristics (76/2, 2017 on Intangible Cultural Heritage in China), and Anthony Bak Buccitelli, for his support of the current issue. They both have shown vision and exemplary effort to create meaningful exchanges between Chinese and international folklorists, and devoted painstaking work to each essay. Certainly, limitations in this special issue are obvious. Not all the new developments in Chinese folkloristics can be covered in this special issue. Readers are encouraged to peruse those recent English publications mentioned above to find more details about certain topics. The first essay, by Fang Xiao and Chen Jia from Beijing Normal University (BNU), reviews seventy years of Chinese folkloristic development, covering some of the approaches in both theory and methods. BNU played an essential role in restoring folklore studies in China in the 1980s, creating the first PhD in Folklore program in China under the leadership of Zhong Jingwen, respected as the founder of modern folkloristics in China. Most current active leading folklorists have studied with Zhong Jingwen at BNU. The second essay, by Xiaochun Liu, is a centennial overview of the folklore program in Sun Yat-sen University, which is also the birthplace of the first Folklore Society, founded in 1927. It continues to play a key role in the development of folkloristics in China through its influential bimonthly journal Cultural Heritage (wenhua yichan), its Institute of Intangible Cultural Heritage Studies, and its team of distinguished faculty.7 130 JUWEN ZHANG The third essay, by Shishan Zhang, addresses village minsuzhi as a new direction both for engaging in social governance and for recording folklore. Shishan Zhang represents the growing Folklore Program in Shandong University, where he is also the editor of the flagship journal in the field of folkloristics in China, Folklore Studies (minsu yanjiu). Following the theme of village folklore studies and its application, the fourth essay (by Xi Ju) and fifth essay (by Shaoya He and Xia Zhu) are based on their experiences engaging in rural social governance through concrete projects with local governments and villages. Xi Ju argues that this is the best future pathway for folklore studies in China, enriching the meaning of the concept of “folklore in practice” (Bronner 2019; Zhang 2020a). These two essays show not only the direction that the folklore program at BNU has been taking, but also the trend for other folklore programs in China, which have been departing from the text-based folk or oral literature approach. The sixth essay (by Wenzaixiang Yan) shows how the classic “grand” theory of rites de passage can be examined from a new perspective, that is, the ritual “subject” being an object, and the ritual demonstrating multiple layers of meanings in a minority village among other villages with different religions and minzu (ethnic minority groups). This essay is drastically shortened from his much longer paper; it provides a glimpse of how the young generation of folklorists are integrating theories in anthropological and folkloristic studies, among others, and tackling complicated issues relating to religion, language, policy, and socioeconomic conditions. Echoing Yan’s essay, the seventh essay (by Wei Xiong) demonstrates how the Deang people have changed their funerary customs as a strategy to adapt to their larger social environment. This illustrates, on the one hand, how certain customs are changed as arbitrary markers of group identity—and on the other hand, how Deang people, like other minority groups in China, have maintained their distinctive traditions by coping with changing social policies, economic conditions, and modes I NTRODUCTION 131 of production. As a result, Deang culture is developed, rather than falling behind or becoming endangered by regional and national development. The eighth essay, by Huijie Zhao, further shows how traditions continue by localizing new cultural elements without losing those cultural roots. While the traditional Double Seven Festival (the Seventh Day of the Seventh Month) has been popularly replaced by the Western Valentine’s Day, Zhao shows that in most regions in China, the Double Seven Festival is still celebrated with the essential meaning of “praying for delicate skills” (qiqiao) for girls and women, while new elements are adopted as identity markers of distinctive regional cultural groups. The ninth essay, by Lihui Yang, discusses the theoretical issue of mythologism, the reconstruction of myths by modern media and cultural industries. Through her fieldwork on the retelling of a creation myth in a touristic context, Yang shows how such retelling and reinvention of myths by the tourist guides has actually rejuvenated the tradition. She argues that though traditions are transmitted by different means, they can still achieve the same goal of maintaining regional and national identities. The tenth essay, by Chengyan Han, tackles the controversial topic of ICH. No doubt ICH has helped boost Chinese folklore studies in general, but Han’s scrutiny of the subjectivity at the core of ICH through the multiple layers of meaning of min (民, folk/people) shows that there has been a great conflict between administrative and practical uses, along with academic interpretation, of min in the entire Chinese ICH movement. This piece also indicates that the ICH movement in China is at a new juncture where it has been forced to ponder the meaning of key terms, such as folk and community, and the role of subjectivity in interpreting and implementing its ideas. Some of the new directions in Chinese folklore studies presented in this issue can be seen in both the scope of topics and the transgenerational span of the authors. Fang Xiao, Xia Zhu, Xiaochun Liu, Lihui Yang, and Shishan Zhang, who received 132 JUWEN ZHANG their PhDs in folklore in the 1990s and early 2000s, represent the first generation of folklorists after the restoration of Chinese folklore studies in the 1980s. The other authors represent a new generation of folklorists, who have either received their PhDs in folklore recently or will do so soon. In this regard, one striking difference between the China Folklore Society and American Folklore Society (including both academic and public sectors) may be the role of young folklorists in the growth of the discipline. In China, recruiting young folklorists has not been a concern, since the younger generation is in the majority and is the main force in teaching or research in the field, whereas in the US, there has been a consistent concern about how to recruit young folklorists for the past two to three decades. Perhaps this updated picture of Chinese folklore studies will pave the way for more interactions between Chinese scholars and folklorists around the world. I S S U E S A B O U T T R A N S L AT I N G C H I N E S E C O N C E P T S I believe that the successful development of any academic discipline is inseparable from conscientious translation, either across languages or across time within a language. While having meaning “lost in translation” is the last thing that a translator wants to see, awareness of ambiguity by translators and readers is a good sign because it leads to conscious efforts to seek the lost meanings in one way or another. However, twisting or distorting meaning, consciously or unconsciously, does harm. In the history of translation between Chinese and English, for example, when the polytheistic notions of “the upper world” or “sky” have been translated into the Christian “heaven,” or when different senses of gods, deities, souls, and spirits shown in similar forms (e.g., kowtowing or burning incense to the supernatural gods versus to the ancestral spirits) are translated using the single term “worshipping,” it not only blurs the semantic connotation of those concepts but also creates perpetual cultural (and even racist) stereotypes. Translation is also an ideological issue beyond language challenges, and bad translation I NTRODUCTION 133 is even more harmful in the communication between peoples with different religions, beliefs, or cultural values. From the sixteenth century onward, the history of translating Chinese folklore into English has proved that, while overall translation may have facilitated cultural understanding, some long-lasting stereotypes have also resulted. In folklore translations since the 1930s, due to the fact that English has become the academic lingua franca, Chinese folklorists have tried to use English terms when talking about Chinese traditions. For example, after “folklore,” “fairy tale,” “nation,” and other concepts were introduced to the Chinese language at the turn of the twentieth century, Chinese intellectuals began to use Western genre concepts such as, myth, legend, folktale, or fairy tale to replace previously existing and longstanding Chinese terms. While there is still a great variance among Chinese folklorists in their use of those terms, it has been an obvious fashion to cram an essay full of newly translated or transliterated terms, a practice that maintains the stereotypical mentality of self-inferiority—very much an illustration of “the feelings of national or cultural inferiority,” or the “nationalistic inferiority complexes” that Alan Dundes discussed (1985:13). In the twenty-firstt century, there has been a wave of calls to seek and use bentu gainan (本土概念, local/native concepts) in Chinese folkloristics, as there has been in many other disciplines (except the physical sciences), the result of a kind of root-seeking for Chinese traditions and national identity. In this wave, there seem to be two main trends. One is to redefine or adapt the translated terms with some interpretation based on Chinese cultural or social realities. For example, the use of “sacred” (shensheng 神圣) in Chinese writing is obviously intended to carry a monotheistic sense. The other trend is to use terms directly from the local or native groups whose folklore is being discussed. An example is the local term lajia (拉家) (or lajiachang 拉家常, which wasused in place of “gossip” or “rumor” to mean everyday chats or interactions among neighbors in a study on a community near Beijing (Xicun 2011). In 134 JUWEN ZHANG essence, these illustrate the concept of “ethnic genre” in a new context (Ben-Amos 1969). These two trends are partly reflected in the essays in this volume. While this topic deserves a much longer article, for now, I can only remind readers to pay attention to new or unfamiliar uses of some concepts so as to grasp the essence of those ideas as they are used by Chinese practitioners and folklorists. I hasten to emphasize that, as mentioned above, the seemingly semantic issue of word choice is also an ideological, paradigmatic issue in a discipline (Zhang 2020a). One needs to try to understand any folklore practice or research in its own context, without imposing one’s own measurements. Clearly, this effort is challenged upfront by different meanings or uses of the same familiar words. In editing this issue, we have tried to balance legibility for English-language readers with the ways that terms are used in Chinese-language scholarship. Readers will also note that the form and tone of these essays are all quite similar to each other and in some ways very different from the typical form and tone of articles in Western journals. For example, readers may note a general tendency toward de-personalization in the writing, as well as a formalistic, listbased organizational structure. After much deliberation, we have elected to keep these articles more or less in their original forms, rather than seeking to render them in a more familiar style. Besides calling attention to these features, I have briefly annotated below some key terms and concepts that readers will find scattered throughout these essays (some of which are also defined in the texts themselves), which will hopefully facilitate deeper understanding of the concepts current in Chinese folklore scholarship. G L O S S A RY OF TERMS AND CONCEPTS Ancient villages: gucunluo 古村落, villages that are recognized by governments as characteristic in traditional architecture or overall landscape, a campaign in line with the ICH movement and tourist development in the last two decades. I NTRODUCTION 135 Chinese characteristics: Zhongguo tese 中国特色, a notion borrowed from political and social senses—for example, to emphasize the act of using domestic rather than foreign terms and concepts in folklore studies. Combining knowledge and action: zixing heyi 知行合一, the neo-Confucian idea about how to seek knowledge and how/ when to act on it. In its current use, it emphasizes that folklorists should apply their knowledge through working with the people to be part of the practice of social governance. Cultural consciousness: wenhua yishi 文化意识, a concept closely related to wenhua zijue 文化自觉, cultural self-awareness, promoted by anthropologist Fei Xiaotong (费孝通 19102005). It is commonly used by Chinese scholars of social sciences and humanities with three layers of meaning: cultural self-awareness is based on the search and inheritance of cultural “roots”; it should also be based on the criticism and development of “truth”; it thus guides the grasp of the developmental laws of culture. Chinese scholars also use this concept to emphasize the self-awareness of Chinese cultural roots and “Chinese characteristics.” Cultural Revolution: wenhua gemin 文化革命, a short form for the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), during which only folk literature or folklore seen as revolutionary or useful to the socialist national reconstruction was allowed and encouraged, and other traditions were criticized or banned as a type of “feudalist” custom. Everyday life: richang shenghuo 日常生活, a concept largely borrowed from the West, but one used among Chinese folklorists with different emphases such as philosophical, sociological, and folkloristic. Folkloricity: minsuxing 民俗性, a concept that emphasizes the ultimate goals of folklore practice, the changing process of folklorization (minsuhua 民俗化), and the purpose of using folklore by both practitioners and elites/governments. 136 JUWEN ZHANG “Going to the people”: zuoxiang minjian 走向民间 (also, dao minjian qu到民间去), an English expression to describe how the intellectuals in the early twentieth century began to collect folklore, pay attention to folk literature, and even conduct fieldwork themselves. This concept has been developed by recent Chinese folklorists to emphasize somewhat different orientations. For example, “looking downward” (yanguan xiangxia 眼光向下) to pay attention to the common people (but not “looking down on” them) and do fieldwork; “facing the reality” (chaoxiang dangxia 朝向当下), to pay (more) attention to current social realities; and “going among the people” (zouzai minjian 走在民间), to consider oneself (folklorist) as one of the folk group that one works with. Interaction of li (rite) and su (custom): lisu hudong 礼俗互 动, a concept emphasizing the relationship between the orthodox ethics in ruling and the orthopraxy of common people’s practice. Li (rite) refers to the Confucian ethics that have been dominant in Chinese society, while su (custom) refers to local/ regional customs that may or may not be in conflict with li. Since there is no single religion that is dominant in Chinese society and culture, Chinese society is also called “li-su society” ( 礼俗社会), meaning that the society is based on the interaction of li ethics and su everyday practices. The List (or, National List of Intangible Cultural Heritage): minlu 名录, referring to the State-Level Intangible Cultural Heritage List. From 2006 to 2021, the central government has issued five lists, with a total of about 1,600 items. In addition to this list of ICH items, there is also a list of ICH bearers (chuchengren 传承人). These lists are at four levels: National, Provincial, City, and Xian (County). In China, xian-county is administratively part of a province, at the same level as a city. Local/native concept: bentu gainian 本土概念, a concept advocating the use of local/regional/native terms, or even dialectic expressions in writing and in theoretical discussion. I NTRODUCTION 137 Minsuzhi 民俗志: “Folkloregraphy,” a term used to avoid “ethnography” because “ethno” has a set of confusing meanings that can be used to refer to an individual minority ethnic group, or the entire Chinese nation. New Culture Movement: xinwenhua yundong 新文化运动, referring to 1915-1922, when the newly established Republic of China struggled to modernize the country by introducing new cultural concepts, mostly European and Japanese terms and concepts, in all academic disciplines. As a result, during and shortly after this period, there was the Ballad Movement, launched from Beijing University, to call for the collection of folksongs or ballads. This is seen as the beginning of Chinese folkloristics. “Observing customs and knowing the politics”: guanfeng zhizheng 观风知政, an expression used to mean that by observing what is current (or customs), one can see the results of implemented ruling policies. This idea has been supported by governments throughout Chinese history through funding the collection of folklore (e.g., folktales, folksongs, ballads). A similar expression is lingyi chali (聆音察理), meaning that by listening carefully to sounds/music from the folk, one can investigate and analyze the underlying meaning. This idea is reflected in the formation of the early classics such as the Book of Songs (Shijing) and the national surveys and collections of folk literature, folk music, and folk drama in the late twentieth century. This has resulted in several thousand volumes, and the current collection of Treasures of Chinese Folk Literature (中国民间文学大系Zhongguo Minjian Wenxue Daxi) (20172025) ultimately to be in 1,000 volumes, by the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles as a national project. “Protection as the foremost, rescuing as priority, inheriting while developing, and making rational use” (保护为主、抢 救第一、传承发展、合理利用), and “government-led, social participation, integrated planning, and classified protection”: (政府主导、社会参与、统筹规划、分类保护), the working policies and strategies created by the Chinese 138 JUWEN ZHANG government in 2004 to implement the Convention for Safeguarding Intangible Culture Heritage. Sacred contract: shensheng qiyue 神圣契约, the relationship between elites and villagers/commoners, which is commonly understood to mean that the elite is responsible for enlightening the villagers/commoners. Now this concept is often used with quotation marks to indicate it is an outdated term. Overall, “sacred” is used in China in a very different way from it is in a monotheistic society. Social governance: shehui zhili 社会治理, a relatively new concept in Chinese, borrowed from Western sociology, in an attempt to replace the still popular concept Social Management (shehui gucanli 社会管理). It implies that society should be governed by all, not from the top down. This concept is being used by more and more Chinese folklorists who are involved in social reform projects because more and more folklore departments or programs are now administratively under schools of sociology or social management in universities. NOTES 1 Consider, for example, the history of folkloristics in Europe (Cocchiara 1971), in Africa (Dorson 1972, Peek and Yankah 2004), in South America (Urban 1991), and in the US (Paredes and Bauman 1972, Bronner 1986, Zumwalt 1988). 2 Some publications that help establish an international discourse between Chinese and International folklorists on Chinese folkloristics include early academic studies of Chinese folklore (Jameson 1932, Chao 1942), new China’s use of folklore (Hrdlickova 1965, Eberhard 1970), the cultural movement in the early twentieth century (Hung 1985), issues of ideology and folklore scholarship (Tuohy 1991), a general introduction to twenty-first-century folkloristics (Bender 2006), the maturity of folkloristics (Li 2015), the essential beliefs of the ICH movement (Zhang and Zhou 2017), an overview of the developmental history of folkloristics (Zhang 2018), discourse and practice among Chinese folklorists (Zhang and You 2019), performing arts (Gibbs 2019), and ICH in practice (You and Hardwick 2020). I NTRODUCTION 139 3 The 2020 China Folklore Society annual meeting was held in November in Wuhan, where hundreds of folklorists gathered in person after months of zero cases of COVID-19 in the city. The theme was “Crises and Choices: Folklore and Folkloristics in the Situation of Epidemics.” 4 In fact, “folklore” was translated first as geyao xue (folk ballad studies) in the early twentieth century because the first folkloristic movement in China was the campaign launched by Beijing University in 1922 to collect ballads as a way to seek Chinese traditions and as part of the ongoing New Culture Movement in China. There were other translations too, such as min xue (people studies). But that term was overtaken by the current term minsu xue, which was preferred by the majority of the folklorists at that time. 5 The Seventh National Census of 2020 census shows in early 2021 that the current rural population is 36.32% and the urban population is about 64%, but the rural population was 86.74% in the First National Census in 1953. 6 For example, the first list of National Traditional Villages published by the central government (via the three Ministries of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, Culture, and Finance) in 2012 includes nearly 700 villages. 7 The team at Sun Yat-sen University has engaged in a number of projects with the American Folklore Society on several field school, forum, and publication projects (Song and Ivey 2017; Zhang and Song 2017). WORKS CITED An, Deming. 2021. The History and Current State of Chinese Proverbs Studies. Proverbium 38:1-11. Bamoqubumo (巴莫曲布嫫). 2007. 民俗志表述范式的新探索 (A New Exploration of the Expressive Paradigm of Folkloregraphy). 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