You can refer to it-------Folk custom is a kind of life style, a kind of inherited life style.
No text or person dictates that we do this, but we unconsciously engage in such a lifestyle.
Folklore is innate to people and connected with the clan. From the day it was born, it has been imprinted with group consciousness.
Folk customs give birth to the soul of the country, and the soul of the country lies in the folk customs.
In the minds of the Chinese people, the Spring Festival is a special symbol that incorporates infinite aftertaste and longing, and is a unique emotional sustenance for the Chinese people. The Spring Festival is the concentrated expression of the folk customs of our Chinese nation. As the Spring Festival approaches, the flavor of the New Year is getting stronger and stronger. In this forum, we invite two scholars to talk about the topic of folk customs.
Since New Year’s Day, people’s mobile phones and mailboxes have been full of blessing text messages and emails, and these will reach their climax in the form of New Year greetings during the New Year. With the development of information technology, the Internet, as a new platform, has brought new forms of expression to traditional folk customs and broadened the space for development. Professor Jiang Yuanlun of Beijing Normal University has a comprehensive interpretation of networked folklore.
Folk customs have long been deeply integrated into the flesh and blood of the Chinese people, and they are the national spirit that has lingered for thousands of years. Colorful traditional festivals, beautiful folklore, and amazing craftsmanship are the essence of folk customs. Professor Chen Qinjian of East China Normal University analyzes folk customs from two aspects of life and culture, and has an in-depth analysis of the meaning of folk customs.
Usually we think of folk customs as traditional folk customs, such as how to celebrate the New Year, how to make rice cakes, etc. In fact, this is only a small part of folk custom. The content of folk custom is much wider and more closely related to life. In the eyes of young people, folk custom is something from the past. This is a misunderstanding. Folklore includes the past, present, and future. Folklore is not ancient.
Folk custom is a kind of life style
What is "phase"? This is the term of Buddhism. Buddhism has its own unique judgment on things, for example: fire is a kind of flame Phase, water is a flowing phase; what is folk custom? Folk custom is a phase of life, an inherited appearance of life. There is no word or person telling us to do this, but we unconsciously engage in such a lifestyle.
The most familiar folk custom is the Spring Festival. How do you celebrate the Spring Festival? Someone once asked me: "Why do we have so little Chinese New Year flavor now, while foreigners have very lively Christmas and Valentine's Day?" In fact, our Chinese New Year flavor turns out to be very strong. In the 1950s, when I was seven or eight years old, I started working with my grandmother in the first half of the Chinese New Year and could not rest until the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. I had things to do all day long for almost a month. According to traditional customs, there are nearly 60 things to do before and after: general cleaning, worshiping stoves, worshiping ancestors, etc. There are no words that dictate how we must do it, and this is just a stylized and popular norm.
Folk customs are not only focused on festivals, but there are many popular unwritten lifestyles in daily life. As far as housing is concerned, we can't feel it in the city, but if we go to the countryside, the house will have a special style. There are wing-style rooms in Jiangnan - once you enter, you will face south, with a wing on the left and right. Why is it like this? The reason is what we call Feng Shui: "Green dragon on the left, white tiger on the right", the middle is the most suitable place for us to live. Why can't or should we avoid opening the door to the north? This is a phase of life. We live in the northern hemisphere. In winter, the cold wind comes from the northwest and is blocked by the "white tiger"; in spring, when the southeast wind blows and there is more rain, the "green dragon" can also block it. The place in the middle makes use of the natural space to prevent cold and rain. It is the earliest concept of Feng Shui. It does not have so many superstitions. This is not the result of people's random imagination. There was no air conditioning in ancient times. How to prevent cold and maintain a suitable temperature? Of course, it depends on the specific environment. Some people think that Feng Shui is superstition. Of course, Feng Shui has indeed added many superstitions during its development. However, we take this as the mainstream and lose the core part, which has caused a lot of misunderstandings.
Folklore also includes life skills. There is information that archaeologists unearthed Qin swords, which were coated with a layer of chrome. Experts noticed that this method of chrome coating only appeared in the West in the 1970s. How did the Qin people apply it? Know.
The sword of King Goujian of Yue has been buried underground for more than two thousand years. When the excavation began, it was found that the sword was bent, but when the archaeologists opened it, it miraculously straightened again. We can imitate the style of this sword now, but we cannot match the craftsmanship of that time.
The development of ancient Chinese splendid civilization relied on a large number of life skills - folk customs. It is a pity that we have not organized these skills from a discipline. Our ancients did not pay attention to this issue, thinking that a small skill is something that a strong man cannot do. Especially literati, so they threw these things away casually. In this way, it will indeed be a great loss to our country. Today we need to re-understand folk customs, and we must not stop at the narrow concept that folk customs are customs and habits.
Folklore as a cultural model
From a cultural perspective, folklore is a cultural model. This pattern tends to be intangible, verbal and non-physical. But it does exist in our lives. We should pay more attention to this invisible and non-material folk cultural phenomenon. For example, "Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai" is a beautiful and familiar story that is well-known in China. In recent years, "Butterfly Lovers" has been seeking to be declared a world cultural heritage. In fact, this started three years ago, but there are many problems. One of the big problems is that various places say that "Butterfly Lovers" is their own. For example, people in Ningbo think that Liang Shanbo is the magistrate of Yin County (today's Fenghua County); people in Shangyu say that "Butterfly Lovers" is their own. The hometown of Yingtai is in Shangyu, Shaoxing; Hangzhou people also argue that Wansong Academy is the place where the protagonist studied... In fact, it doesn't matter where "Butterfly Lovers" is from. The key is that "Butterfly Lovers" reflects a certain stage of the Chinese people marriage patterns. In ancient times, women in Yue were relatively strong. During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the culture of the north moved to the south, and the "Butterfly Lovers" came into being. From strong to soft, it developed towards Confucianism. Therefore, the culture of "Butterfly Lovers" actually reflects a new cultural model of marriage during the period of social transformation and people's psychology of praying for both sexes. It expresses loyalty to love and unswerving emotions of life and death. This is a typical Chinese man and woman. The invisible verbal relationship between the sexes.
There are actually quite a lot of invisible verbal modes, not only in China, but also abroad. One of my students is studying in Australia and invited local teachers to come to my home for dinner. There was a soup among them, which the teacher found very delicious after drinking it. Asked him what it was, he said it was a wild duck. The teacher was shocked and immediately said that catching wild ducks is illegal in Australia. The student suddenly realized it and said he would pay attention next time. Unexpectedly, three days later, a fine came. The Animal Welfare Committee fined him 5,000 Australian dollars and took away all of his work-study money for one and a half years. In China, it seems that there is something wrong with this teacher. He has eaten the duck and is still complaining? But in Australia, it is normal to do this, and if the teacher does not report it, there will be problems. This is also a cultural model, and we must pay more attention to this cultural model now.
Folklore carries the soul of the nation
Although the folk customs shown in our real life are bizarre and colorful, their deep roots have a unique identity unique to the bearers of this folk custom. living cultural genes. In this cultural gene, a kind of mutual consent of the same heart is rippling with the continuous stream of collective consciousness with the connotation of the same spirit since ancient times. And thus constitutes the foundation of the ideological and spiritual culture of the group of people-the nation and the country, the core of the national soul and the national soul.
Folklore is innate to people and connected with the clan. From the day it was born, it has been imprinted with group consciousness. Any folk custom, in the final analysis, is a group feeling and identity. The oldest folk customs among various ethnic groups: myths, witchcraft, totems, dialects, rituals, etc., are the original ecological cultural consciousness maps of human beings. Physiological and psychological mechanisms invariably breed sexual conventions and common sense. It contains the unique cultural genes and cultural evolution system of human beings in the process of self-realization, which gradually frees people from bestiality and promotes human nature. Its foundation is like the original ecological folk customs of gold-bearing associated mines.
Folklore itself has the cultural power to standardize patterns and inspire thoughts on subsequent social behaviors. In reality, it communicates between generations and a historical stage through tangible material forms such as clothing, food, housing, and transportation, and intangible mental representations such as tastes, fashions, and customs, through verbal, behavioral, and psychological carriers. Continuity and identity with another historical stage constitute a cultural code for a society to create and recreate itself, and lay the foundation for the orderly development of mankind.
Therefore, a society cannot completely get rid of folk traditions, but can only creatively transform them on the basis of old folk traditions. The same is true for the construction of a country's lofty national spirit.
The development of human society, from the perspective of ideological and cultural history, has never been completely rational, but has always advanced in the intertwined movement of rationality and irrationality. As a tradition, folklore itself is such a link from generation to generation that exists today. There is no doubt that many long-standing folk traditions no longer exist in clearly identifiable forms, but this does not affect their continued development with certain components and variations. It is this internal normative succession that transcends the boundaries of time and space and constitutes the same behaviors, patterns, tastes and hobbies from generation to generation, thus contributing to the cohesion of a country's inherent national spirit. Layers of accumulation.
Some people say that traditional folk customs are outdated and that only by introducing modern foreign culture and spiritual civilization can the soul of the country be recast. This is incorrect. In building the spiritual civilization of our nation, we should of course absorb the excellent spiritual culture of foreign countries. However, the national soul of a country, the lofty spirit that represents the national group, cannot be foreign, but can only be inherent in the nation. Its foundation is not abroad, but in our excellent folk customs that have been passed down for thousands of years. middle. The spiritual power of the nation shown in these folk customs is enough to represent the majesty of our national soul. For example, in the folk customs of the mind, the phoenix does not rest on the parasol tree, the great ambition of the roc spreads its wings for ninety thousand miles, the tragic behavior of Jingwei carrying wood to fill the East China Sea, the bravery and perseverance of Kuafu Zhuri, the bravery and perseverance of Dayu who controls floods, and the man who passes through the house three times without entering. Self-sacrifice, etc., all make people sigh and feel excited. In the folk customs of life and society, the Double Ninth Festival involves ascending high places and respecting the elderly. Its spirit is still advocated by society today and has become an outstanding traditional spirit of the nation that is echoed by the whole people.
Folk customs give birth to the soul of the country, and the soul of the country lies in the folk customs. For example, the United States is only a few hundred years old. It is also a country of immigrants. Its residents come from five continents and four oceans. How to stick them together firmly is a big problem. For this reason, one after another festivals and festivals have been designed. Other customary activities to practice and demonstrate an American spirit. So far, they have more than 200 weird festivals. Through these dazzling, colorful festivals, we can clearly see the clear motive - an attempt to forge the soul of America. We don’t care how effective this method is. However, folk customs and the national soul and national spirit are closely connected in a mother-child connection. This is a fact that we must not ignore.