Li Ying/Finishing
On November 29, 2021, at the expert lecture activity of the 5th Local Literature and History Advanced Seminar, Professor Feng Xiaocai of the Department of History of East China Normal University gave an academic lecture entitled "Digital Literature and History and Local Memory". Feng Xiaocai believes that the traditional method of collecting local literature and history needs to carry out a "digital revolution", put forward the two concepts of "digital literature and history" and "local memory", and calls on local literary and historical workers from all over the country to cooperate, share, rescue and inherit, and use a variety of innovative means to quickly rescue and preserve all kinds of material or immaterial memories to give to future generations. The lecture was presided over by Associate Professor Liu Jianping of the Department of History of East China Normal University.
Digital Literature History
At the beginning of the lecture, Feng Xiaocai talked about the urgency of local memory rescue. The local cultural heritage and historical heritage disappear very quickly, what means should be used to rescue these materials as quickly, urgently and effectively as possible? He pointed out that digitalization is a completely new revolution in historical research and may bring a lot of convenience to historical research. Image, sound and AI technology, ultra-high rate compression, preservation, dissemination and review of paper literature, including deep mining of data, high integration of database and network resources, and operation of GIS systems have brought revolutionary changes to historical research.
Feng Xiaocai defines "digital literature and history" as: the introduction of a large number of digital methods in local literary and historical work, greatly improving the rescue efficiency of material or intangible historical heritage, and expanding the channels for preserving the historical relics that are about to disappear. Including the use of cameras, mobile phones, voice recorders, camcorders, etc. as quickly as possible to rescue a variety of folk memories, these memories include literature and word of mouth, physical objects, rituals, villages, neighborhoods, buildings and other spaces, all the things related to people's memories and fleeting things, as far as possible in digital form to rescue, in order to prepare future people to consult, study and recall. In addition, "digital literature and history" also refers to the universal use of digital databases in local literary and historical research to improve the level of literary and historical research, and also refers to the use of digital technology in the public transformation of literary and historical research results.
Feng Xiaocai pointed out that the significance of digital literature and history is embodied in the following aspects: The first is preservation, space is limited, but the hard disk is unlimited, the technology of data storage is very convenient, and many backups can be made. The second and most important is the collection, which has difficulties in both acquisition and preservation, but digital collection is feasible and fast. Scanning and preserving the materials first, including the rescue of word of mouth, the shooting of physical objects and ceremonies, is a very important work, and it must be done quickly. The third is digital retrieval, the database is constantly updated, and it is necessary to make full use of various platforms for retrieval. Digital means should also be used in the oral interview process. Especially in the case of the epidemic, offline interviews cannot be achieved, and online interviews must be done. In addition, there are digital presentations, and the results of compilation and research should be presented digitally, because modern people use a lot of electronic products, but there are too few quality suppliers. It is very important to transform the results of literary and historical editing and research into knowledge, visualize and story, and disseminate them through douyin, WeChat public accounts, etc.
Oral interviews
Next, Feng Xiaocai shared his experience of doing oral interviews. The use of digital technology in oral interviews includes conducting background information surveys on interviewees before interviews, checking the content mentioned by interviewees through the network and database in real time during interviews, and communicating with interviewees in a timely manner to improve interview efficiency. It also includes the identification of video data, the excavation and reproduction of follow-up data, and the recording and archiving of the interview process, all of which must make full use of digital technology.
He pointed out that before oral interviews, it is necessary to conduct background information surveys on interviewees, fully understand the interviewees, and set up high-quality interview outlines in order to win the respect of the interviewees. He attaches great importance to building trust between the two sides in the interview process, stressing that oral interviews should not be regarded as one-way information extraction, but as a two-way process of emotional exchange and information exchange. Interviews are an open rather than closed process that cannot label respondents. For example, to interview a veteran of the War of Resistance, in addition to interviewing his experience in the War of Resistance, you can also interview other important experiences in his life history, do not ignore the many wonderful stories in the river of others' growth. The old man is a museum, but the interviewer only looks at one window and is not interested in anything else, which is both disrespectful to the interviewee and missed the opportunity to rescue rich historical memories. Therefore, we must keep an open mind in terms of the topic, depth, breadth, and details of the interview.
In addition, pay attention to the use of concepts, use more language and vocabulary that they can understand in interviews, and do not ask too many macro-critical questions. Feng Xiaocai put forward the principle of "three modernizations", and the design of questions during interviews must be specific, routine and detailed. At the same time, we should pay attention to the interviewees' own "reasonableness statements" or "legitimacy construction", some respondents have formed formatted memories, and on the basis of fully understanding all the published materials, use details to avoid excessive inertial repetition of the narrator, and guide the interviewees from emotions and back to specific historical situations.
Feng Xiaocai also introduced the cases of the presentation of local literary and historical compilation and research results and public promotion that have done a relatively good job. For example, the Southern Oral History Project and the New York Public Library's Community Oral History Project have done a large number of thematic oral interview projects, with videos and recordings, which can be played online, so that the memory is preserved. People can watch, disseminate, interact online, and even combine with public education. Ireland's 1916 folk letter project was to combine the collection of historical materials with community education and youth education, and each participant had to sort out a letter from the First World War and then recite and play it at the same time, which became a very good historical education project.
Feng Xiaocai believes that modern society is a media era, but there are too few quality suppliers, and many young people live in a virtual world, but have no interest in the real historical world. So he has been pushing for oral history education courses, allowing students to visit the elderly in their own homes and let their children chat with their parents. This is also a way to bring family ties closer. Mobilizing college and high school students to visit their families, and then uploading video recordings and turning them into a public memory bank, both for solicitation, education, and dissemination, is well worth doing.
Local memory
Feng Xiaocai mentioned in the lecture that when he did research in the local area, he could often hear the colloquialisms or slips of the tongue that people spoken around the local characteristics, and often presented all the local cultural differences in different regions in one sentence. A local folk song or nursery rhyme is also full of emotional attachment and connection between people and places. These are all important parts of local memory.
Feng Xiaocai believes that local memory refers to the historical relics of people's lives, production, systems, society, culture, and consumption in a specific geographical space. The local practice of national systems or policies and the events experienced by people, as well as people's perceptions and emotions, are also included. In addition to well-known archival documents, folk documents and word-of-mouth historical materials, its carriers also include various other forms of faith, rituals, performances, entertainment and other intangible forms.
In addition to the public archives and the ancient books, what "local memory" should be rescued? First of all, the memories of the elderly, as well as the villages, communities, and factories that will be bulldozed, these things that are about to disappear are definitely the scope of endangered historical memory. Secondly, the old paper heads that may be destroyed, including the words and slogans on the walls, should be photographed and recorded, and the relics that will be burned by future generations may also include extremely important local memory historical materials, Feng Xiaocai proposed not to burn the relics indiscriminately, especially the words or objects with important historical memories should be preserved and donated to relevant institutions or community (village history) museums. First of all, there must be publicity and education, and then there must be rewards and incentives, and local cultural and historical departments should think about problems from the perspective of the solicitees by providing donors with donation certificates and other ways, and encourage them to do this in various ways.
In addition to material memories, it is also necessary to preserve those immaterial memories that are about to pass away and are not valued. These include the inheritance of crafts that are about to be interrupted, the local dialects that no one wants to speak, the rapidly disappearing rituals, customs, local opera performances, and so on. Not only does the intangible cultural heritage need to be rescued, as long as it is a human life, it is worth recording. Feng Xiaocai quoted a sentence that Professor David Ke said: "Everyone is a museum, and the most precious historical resource is people." He pointed out that man is the most precious historical material, and without man, there is no information preserved in his brain, so oral interviews are particularly important.
The ancients said, "Etiquette is lost and the wilderness is asked", which means that the liturgy collapses, and the lost traditional morality and culture can still be found in the folk, but what if the "wild" is lost in the future? Now the "wild" may not be easy to find, the city is full of commercial blocks, and the countryside is full of highly homogeneous new rural houses. Feng Xiaocai hoped that the "wild" would be able to seek help from the "museum", and all the things should be rescued quickly and enter the archives, cultural centers, museums, and various collection institutions. People after 200 years can go here and find out how the people of the past lived, what they ate and how they played, and what jokes they made. And to be dynamic, with a virtual glasses, you can go back to the world we live in a hundred or two hundred years ago.
Now many places are engaged in political performance projects, commercial project development, the ancient buildings are torn down, some antiques are built, and then it is highly commercialized. Feng Xiaocai believes that this highly stereotyped transformation is a very sad thing. Now that many ancient villages have been abandoned, it is very sad that the long historical memory may have been preserved. He gave the examples of the Hong Kong Lai Chi Wo Sustainable Countryside Plan and the Taiwan Shao Cultural Life Restoration Park, suggesting that in the process of rural construction, attention should be paid to the preservation and restoration of historical culture.
Faced with the question of what to do if there are not enough people raised by many literary and historical workers, Feng Xiaocai proposed that volunteer recruitment can be carried out to turn the preservation of memory into a government project and a cultural project, which can be combined with the research and study activities and social practice activities of college and middle school students. Let them go out and chat with the elderly, rescue and save their memories. At the same time, to develop a self-service memory rescue and preservation platform, capable Internet companies can help set up platforms, provide oral history specifications and formats through self-service platforms, provide technical assistance for shooting videos or recorded audio uploads, store oral videos and provide copies for the public, and digital online sharing of folk documents to preserve common memories. In addition, it is also necessary to establish a cooperation alliance, local plus local, local plus university, professional plus amateur, official plus non-governmental, everyone to do together to save a little more memory.
Feng Xiaocai pointed out that the reason why East China Normal University holds a local literature and history advanced training class every year is to cooperate with professors from different colleges and universities and local literary and historical workers, and everyone will work together to do this thing and improve the research level. Only by cooperating, sharing, rescuing and inheriting together can we preserve the memories that represent most of the people in China.
(This article has been reviewed by Professor Feng Xiaocai)
Editor-in-Charge: Zhong Yuan
Proofreader: Liu Wei
![Memories of the city[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)