Reporter | Pan Wenjie
Edit | Yellow Moon
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The last day of the end of the year is called "year apart", which means to divide the old age from this year and replace it with a new year. Affected by the epidemic, many people can't go home for the New Year, and the Interface Culture Editorial Department also has several partners who stay in the city where they work on weekdays and will spend this special Chinese New Year's Eve alone or with friends. If you have been reunited with your family, then I wish you a good reunion with your family; if you also spent the Spring Festival in a different place, I also wish you a Homesickness but still a little happy Spring Festival holiday.
Before the interface culture Spring Festival routine stops, in time for the last day of the Year of the Ox, we also have to present you with a Spring Festival book list, whether you are cleaning, cooking, gathering, grabbing red envelopes or waiting for the Spring Festival Gala, you may wish to take a look at it - "China in the Symbols" tells the story behind the various Chinese symbols that we see; "Spring Festival in Beijing" is a picture of the folk customs of the Northern Spring Festival; "Festivals of Ancient China" lets us know, In Han Dynasty China, there can be five different starting dates for a year, behind which is the unique cosmology and worldview of ancient Chinese; "Revolution and Festivals" tells how the festivals we are familiar with today are affected by revolutionary discourse, and are particularly closely related to today's life; the book "Chasing Deer Spring Festival Gala" reveals for us why a program from the creative stage to meeting the audience will go through countless screenings, and how various audiovisual symbols are finally presented.
China in Symbols
Zhao Yuntao
Zhonghua Bookstore 2021
There are various hypotheses about the origin of the Spring Festival, and the folk events of this period have produced many symbolic cultural symbols over the course of the millennium - eating Chinese New Year's Eve rice, pasting the Spring Festival, changing the yellow calendar, cutting window flowers, pasting the word "Fu", setting off firecrackers, hanging lanterns, and of course, people will also discuss the zodiac and the year of the birth with relish. Even if you don't pay attention to these symbols, you may see a variety of dragon and phoenix auspicious patterns or lions and cat decorations in the process of walking the streets, as well as bat patterns that imply auspiciousness, the gods of fortune and fortune stickers on the door, and you may also encounter the city god and the land lord on the country road. How did these symbols come about? What kind of legends or traditions are behind them?
Although the Xinhai Revolution stipulated that January 1 was the new year, the Gregorian calendar had a great impact on the lunar calendar, but due to many traditional factors, it is difficult to completely replace the Lunar New Year on New Year's Day, and the Spring Festival is a good opportunity to dig deep into our own traditions. Zhao Yuntao, a teacher and head of the Department of Literature at the School of Chinese of the University of International Business and Economics, provides a key to our understanding of traditional folklore. This book not only explains the common sense of the current culture, but also sorts out the evolution of various symbols from a historical perspective. He not only contacted works such as "Journey to the West" and "Dream of the Red Chamber" that readers are familiar with, but also was able to combine current events , such as sanxingdui , which has been frequently "updated" in recent years , to explain the symbols in folklore, which are highly readable.
"Spring Festival in Beijing"
Painted by He Daqi
Beijing Publishing House, 2021
Lao She wrote a famous "Spring Festival in Beijing", from the eighth day of the eighth month to the nineteenth day of the first month, showing a picture of the folk customs and customs of the old Beijing Spring Festival, and also comparing the Spring Festival of the new and old societies, emphasizing the change of customs and customs of the new society. And this "Spring Festival in Beijing" is derived from the series of Beijing custom paintings serialized by the author He Daqi in the Beijing Evening News.
Marley, cannon lights, big bells, rat, what are these? Empty bamboo, glass horn, poof, what's so fun about these? He Daqi strung together relevant folk customs and life memories with the Spring Festival customs of old Beijing from "Lap 8" to "February 2nd Dragon Raising", some of which may not even be spoken to by locals. With the prosperity of life, new clothes, candy, and pressed money seem to be less desirable than before, but while we continue to move forward, we also ignore many interesting details of life. As long as you open the book co-created by He Daqi, who is in his eighties, and three generations of his sons and grandchildren, the taste of the year shared by generations is still coming. The folk customs of the millennium may be temporarily suspended due to the epidemic, but there will also be a more prosperous inheritance.
Festivals in Ancient China
[American] Dirk Budd by Wu Gefei et al
Gaien Publishing Co., Ltd. 2017
According to the American sinologist Derk Bodde, through the study of Chinese festivals, it is possible to better understand traditional Chinese thought. Budd's interest in Chinese festivals and Chinese folk beliefs and customs lasted for four decades. He saw that the chinese cultural spirit was not only embodied in the Confucian classics, but also in the daily lives of ordinary people, so he regarded the festival as a breakthrough in understanding the lives and beliefs of the people. Chinese thinkers believe that man exists in the universe that contains all things, man is the center of the universe, and is an independent existence relative to all things, while the universe is a circulating life form, and death means rebirth, which is also reflected in the cycle of the four seasons. It is no coincidence that the Chinese nation values festivals more than any other nation, and that the ceremonies Chinese are held in the open air, not in buildings.
Although Western sinologists of the same period as Bude focused on chinese festivals in modern times, Bude believes that the Han Dynasty played a role as the cornerstone of China's feudal system. He discusses the social and cosmological views of Han Confucianism, as well as the integration of folk beliefs, values, and philosophical worldviews. In the Han Dynasty, people had multiple beginnings of the year - there were five days that could be used to leave the old and welcome the new, and could all be used as the beginning of the year. The answer lies in the book Festivals of Ancient China.
Revolution and Festivals
By Han Xiaoli
Social Science Literature Publishing 2019
Lao She talked about the different feelings of the old society and the new society in "The Spring Festival in Beijing", and the article ended: "Now the New Year is not as lively as before, but how sober and healthy it is." In the past, people used to be blessed by gods and ghosts, but now everyone is working all year round, and everyone should also celebrate the festival happily. "After the old society entered the new society, what kind of changes did the festivals take place? What do these changes mean? Han Xiaoli, author of the book "Revolution and Festivals: Cultural Life of Festivals in the North China Base Areas (1937-1949)", saw that after the establishment of the modern nation-state, traditional festivals were regarded as the antithesis of modern civilization and became the object of transformation. At the beginning of the founding of the Republic of China, it announced the abolition of the summer calendar, the abolition of most traditional festivals, and the promotion of a new set of festivals with distinct political colors to create a new national consciousness. Although the Republic of China government's strong transformation of the festival culture to remove the old cloth and the new cloth has not received the expected effect, the festival itself has received more and more attention from the official.
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, with the establishment of base areas, festivals were gradually valued by the Communist Party of China as a medium and channel for social mobilization. By transforming traditional festivals, introducing and creating new festivals and changing the form and content of old festival cultural activities, the modern theme of revolution and production is integrated into the festival, so that the people can be educated in a warm atmosphere. The construction of festival culture in the base areas embodies the "governance" of the base society mediated by culture, and after such cultural "governance", the festivals are given more political significance, and the organization and participation in festival activities are no longer just the spontaneous actions of the people, but have become revolutionary work under the leadership of the government.
Han Xiaoli believes that on the one hand, it is in the process of participating in the festival activities that the people "understand current affairs, receive education, improve their consciousness, and then strengthen the collective value orientation and behavioral norms", from this point of view, the transformation of the festival in the base area is undoubtedly successful. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the experience of social mobilization and social indoctrination during these war years was inherited, and for a long time after that, revolutionary and modernity were the main criteria for official organization of festivals and cultural activities. But on the other hand, the excessive emphasis on the political and practical significance of festivals has also brought about a rupture of cultural symbols and cultural connotations, resulting in the separation of traditional festivals and the social soil on which they depend for survival, "The most intuitive feeling of this rupture and division that continues to today is probably that the festival flavor of traditional festivals is getting weaker and weaker." ”
Chasing Deer at the Spring Festival Gala: Contemporary Chinese Mass Culture and Leadership Issues
Written by Shi Libin
China Yanshi Publishing House, 2014
One of the traditional activities of the Spring Festival is probably a family sitting around watching the Spring Festival Gala, which is also a "new folk custom" created by the national party and reform and opening up. However, have you ever thought about these questions when you are addicted to cross-talk sketches, song and dance acrobatics: how is the theme of the Spring Festival Gala decided, who is chosen as the host, which stars are selected to appear on the stage, and what kind of mysteries are behind it? Why are there almost no intellectuals on the Stage of the Spring Festival Gala? How is the screening and review of programs carried out, and what are the criteria for "clean filtering" of various audiovisual symbols? You know, a show may go through countless reviews from creativity to meeting the audience, which also shows the caution that dominates the production of cultural symbols.
Shi Libin, author of the book "Chasing Deer spring festival gala", believes that the spring festival gala reflects the practice of cultural leadership with Chinese characteristics. He saw that in the past, many studies have one-sidedly regarded the audience as "deceived" in the sense of the Frankfurt School, but the Spring Festival Gala is not a cage of ideas, but a place of negotiation, negotiation and contention, involving the competition of national culture, the struggle for regional culture, the competition for culture of all social classes, the struggle for capital, the struggle for power, the competition for fashion and ideas, the competition between literary and artistic styles, and so on. From a historical point of view, in the entertainment trend represented by the Spring Festival Gala, the Chinese story is characterized by the transformation from the farewell revolution to the consumption revolution, the operation of the dominant culture from a single rigid management to a flexible control of the production of cultural symbols, from a large-scale movement that affects the whole society to a silent entertainment consumption. CCTV has absorbed a large number of coding methods and operating strategies of the capitalist entertainment industry, effectively allocated multiple discourse resources such as official, private, and international, and also shown the flexibility of dominant discourse.