Rural opera performances and modern Chinese people

Author: (USA) R.David Arkush
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2000-12-01
Features: Performing Rural Opera and Chinese Modern Masses uses textual materials from folk opera in North China and employs field revisit surveys, with Ding County in Hebei as the working base. It conducts interdisciplinary research at the intersection of history and folklore, focusing on the ideological transformations experienced by the Chinese modern masses during the 20th-century revolutions. All human culture arises, exists, is transmitted, and evolves to meet the survival and development needs of a certain group. Folklore is a widespread form of culture and, of course, follows this same pattern of emergence and development. Folk culture is the most fundamental and also highly important type of culture in the lives of group members. There is no culture more closely tied to and permeating the lives of the masses than folklore. Archaeological evidence shows that as early as the Old Stone Age, among primitive communities, there existed some of the simplest customs—later the seedlings of folklore. As their lives advanced, these primitive customs grew and became more firmly established. Once human groups entered what is called the civilized period, with the advent of writing, pottery-making, and metallurgy, these customs and habits naturally advanced in step with societal progress. At the same time, due to the division of groups (the emergence of classes), what were originally universal customs also began to exhibit a certain degree of differentiation.