Outline of the History of Han Nationality's Customs and Culture

Author: Xu Jiesun
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2004-10-01
Features: The study of Chinese folk history has long been weak in China's academic circles. Zhang Cailiang's History of Chinese Folk Customs was published in the late Qing Dynasty in 1902. This pioneering work on Chinese folk history almost dominated the 20th century for a hundred years without a successor. In the late late Qing Dynasty, it was a great era of surging progressive thought and turbulent reforms. Although the author was limited by the times and historical materials, he already demonstrated an evolutionary worldview, a simple materialist historical view, and modern academic thinking and concepts, all of which are rare and valuable. However, this book only went up to the Ming Dynasty and abruptly ended, not being a comprehensive history. Later, Deng Ziqin's manuscript of History of Chinese Folk Customs was published, but its publication date was as late as 1988 in the late 20th century, and the manuscript is now lost, leaving academia with great regret. By the early 1990s of the 20th century, Yan Changhong published History of Modern Chinese Social Folk Customs. The author put a lot of effort into researching and organizing modern Chinese folk customs, which to some extent made up for the shortcomings left by Zhang Cailiang, but it was still not a comprehensive history. In the meantime, although various specialized works were published one after another, there has never been a comprehensive history of folk customs. The publication of this book fills this major gap. The long period of silence in folk history research, I believe, can be attributed to two reasons: First, those who write cultural history have not recognized in academic theory how the emergence and evolution of folk customs influence the development and progress of a nation's culture, thus neglecting the study of folk customs and their changes; second, those who write cultural history, due to narrow horizons and a lack of expertise in folk studies and folk history, have avoided engaging with the topic. This is a result of historical circumstances. Building on the research of predecessors, and referring to and absorbing the reasonable insights of senior and contemporary scholars, a series of concepts and principles have been proposed: "Folk customs are lifestyles that are widely recognized and have become habitual in a particular society," "modeled lifestyles"; and distinguishing folk customs, as "modeled lifestyles that are conventionally agreed upon by social groups," into six major categories: production, daily life, rituals, festivals, beliefs, and social customs. Especially, it has been proposed: "Folk culture is an important component of the cultural heritage of every ethnic group or nation, and also one of the main identifiers distinguishing ethnic groups," "Folk history is an important part of the formation, development, and transformation history of nations, ethnic groups, or states." Their arguments on these issues and their theoretical elaborations have brought new progress to the study of folk studies and folk history: not only have they defined the objects of folk history narration and discussion, but they have also established the status of folk customs in the identification of ethnic groups, nations, or states, as well as the position of folk history in the field of history, especially in cultural history, which is very important.