She said that people have to use mirrors to see what they look like.
There are a lot of excellent things in the country tradition,
We don't have to throw them away.
Just a little modified,
Maybe it's another way ahead of its time.
She wants artists and all those who love the countryside,
We all have to "take a mirror" to the countryside,
Help farmers see the beauty of their own culture.
As a highly respected student of Mr. Fei Xiaotong in his later years, Fang Lili once asked the teacher a question outside of academics: "Do you believe in fate?" Fei Xiaotong's answer is that what is the fate of people is difficult to figure out, but in the process of historical development, there will be an invisible pair of "Hongmeng hands" that use different people to bear different historical responsibilities.
In Chinese, Hongmeng is the unexplained chaotic state of the universe. Spiritual people have the responsibility to "establish a heart for heaven and earth" and to keenly perceive and reveal the spirit of the times.
Fang Lili saw the scholar's demeanor and cultural self-consciousness from the previous masters. She said that Mr. Fei Xiaotong's attitude of "seeking knowledge from the truth" and "re-practicing and re-doing" had the greatest impact on her, and she was always spurred and encouraged to not be bound by books, and to go deep into social practice to understand people's lives and experience the torrent of life.
Her research focuses on fieldwork, seeking to return to the origin of human culture, to the place where social facts occurred, and to obtain unique perspectives and discoveries.
Depart from your hometown of Jingdezhen
Fang Lili grew up in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi, the porcelain capital, and has a natural sensitivity to local traditional handicrafts.
In the early 1990s, the newly opened Chinese society was undergoing an unprecedented and tremendous change. At this time, Fang Lili was studying for a doctorate in the Department of History of the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts. "At that time, the students were desperately trying to learn English, and everyone was suspicious of tradition. I was thinking, if we all westernize, then is our own culture still useful? Fang Lili said that every time she returns to her hometown, watching the ancient town she was familiar with when she was a child drift away a little bit, she is unwilling, that is the porcelain capital that has swept the world, with more than 1,000 years of cultural heritage, is it worthless to be thrown away by those craftsmen?
"One day we will learn as much from the non-Westerns as they do from us." The words of the American anthropologist Kissing in his monograph "Anthropology" touched Fang Lili quite a bit, "I want to be like an anthropologist, write a historical ethnography about the Jingdezhen folk kilns, and record the crafts that are about to disappear." ”
The idea gave her a sense of mission. Because Chinese history has always been heavy on morality and not on technology, the history of the culture and skills of ceramic craftsmen in Jingdezhen has not been well recorded. "Maybe in the eyes of others this is a matter of rotten sesame seeds, but I believe it will be useful." Fang Lili wrote in "The Ancient Town That Drifted Away": Like an ancient dream, I picked up this dream and described it.
At that time, there was no concept of intangible cultural heritage protection, and she began this work with a conscious and forward-looking awareness. It was also at this time that Fang Lili began to have a strong interest in anthropology. This is a discipline that looks forward to the future from the origin of human culture, especially anthropology's concern for cultural differences and the perspective of equal viewing of different national cultures, which she particularly appreciates.
In this way, when she graduated with her doctorate, Fang Lili took the outline of the monograph "Jingdezhen Minyao" and applied for the postdoctoral mobile station of the Institute of Sociology and Anthropology of Peking University.
"My research perspective is very marginalized in the institute, so I never expect to be valued by Mr. Fei Xiaotong."
In 1996, Fang Lili conducted a fieldwork for the postdoctoral outbound report, and returned to Jingdezhen again, she found that with the rise of globalization and tourism, there were many handicraft distribution centers for overseas antique porcelain at the junction of urban and rural areas in Jingdezhen. She sees this as a post-industrial phenomenon, a reconstruction of tradition in modernization. Antique porcelain is just one starting point for the revival of jingdezhen's future ceramic handicrafts. According to her own judgment, she completed the "Tradition and Change- FieldWork Report on the New and Old Folk Kiln Industry in Jingdezhen".
This report was taken seriously by Mr. Fei Xiaotong. Fei Xiaotong affirmed that her research "is not from books to books, but to life practice, to see people's things with their own eyes, and to experience the development of society." He admires Fang Lili's writing perspective of putting history and tradition together with Jingdezhen's new creation and prejudgment of the future, which has many connections with the "living history" he thinks about.
That time, Fei Xiaotong and Fang Lili exchanged for more than an hour, and later when they met again, Fei Xiaotong talked to her about the "life" and "death" of culture. He believes that the elements of culture, whether material or spiritual, are alive when they have "functions" on people, and cannot be said to be dead when they no longer function. Functions can change, from satisfying this need to meeting another need, and cultural relics and systems that have lost their function for a while can also function again in another period and be revived again. This requires studying how to keep the seeds of culture alive and maintain healthy genes. He hopes that Fang Lili will pay attention to the genes and seeds of Chinese culture in her research, and find the inner essence of Chinese culture from history.
This conversation had a profound impact on Li Li's academic research.
The presentation of the theory of heritage resources
At the turn of the century, the state put forward the strategy of large-scale development of the western region. Fei Xiaotong encouraged Fang Lili to apply for a national project on the protection, development and utilization of human resources in the western region, and to learn from cadres and grow up in practice.
The project was launched in 2001, and in the following eight years, more than 100 members of the research group went to the western region to investigate, walked more than 20,000 kilometers, collected a large number of materials on folk art and folk culture in the western region, and completed the construction of the database of human resources in the northwest. Later, this database was incorporated into the national database for the protection of intangible cultural heritage. He also completed the analysis and research of more than 70 cases, and completed the general report of "From Heritage to Resources: Research on Human Resources in Western China". On this basis, Fang Lili wrote a series of papers on the theory of heritage resources.
In 2001, Fang Lili followed Mr. Fei Xiaotong to Xi'an to participate in seminars on the development of the western region. The first on the right is Mr. Ding Shisun, then chairman of the Central Committee of the China Democratic League.
In this process, Fang Lili saw that on the one hand, many traditional cultures were disappearing, and on the other hand, many traditional cultures were being "revived" in an artistic form, that is, the revival of handicrafts and the revival of folk performing arts. "Heritage" is no longer simply a passive object of protection, but also a resource that can be developed and utilized to reconstruct today's and future societies.
Then, Fang Lili led the academic team to undertake the national key project "The Development of Arts and Crafts in Social Transformation". As a result of the inspection, the same story as Jingdezhen is happening in different places such as Yixing, Zhenhu, Guangdong, Foshan, Shandong, Fengxiang, Shaanxi, and Putian, Fujian: at this time, There were thousands of pottery workshops and 120,000 handicraft practitioners in Jingdezhen, 200,000 people around Xianyou County in Putian were making handmade mahogany furniture, 8,000 embroidery girls in Suzhou Zhenhu, and 100,000 potters in Yixing...
In these places, modernity and tradition are no longer opposed, and traditional heritage is transformed into cultural capital, which promotes the development of productive forces and constitutes a new cultural and economic phenomenon.
The revival of handicrafts echoes and promotes the emergence of a new Chinese lifestyle with traditional meaning and cultural elegance. Subsequently, in the popularity of Chinese clothing, the rise of tea ceremony, incense ceremony, flower ceremony, guzheng, guqin, etc., Fang Lili saw that the new Chinese fashion is driving China's new economic growth points.
She went on to propose the concept of "Intangible Cultural Heritage 3.0 Level". Intangible Cultural Heritage 1.0 is to sort out and sort out heritage, 2.0 is to inherit heritage, and 3.0 is for artists and craftsmen to work together to create new cultural products and lifestyles.
Ms. Fang said she had spent 20 years studying the question of what form China's traditional culture would be reconstructed and regenerated in contemporary society. She firmly believes that culture is pluralistic, and one day, Chinese culture will surely re-enlighten Western culture, and folk culture will be as important as elite culture.
As early as 2008, after the completion of the Western Project, Fang Lili visited many museums around the world to understand the influence of Chinese handicrafts in the world. She was extremely touched by the grandeur of ancient China as the world's handicraft power: before the 19th century, the world's best luxury goods were in China. In ancient times, China was not only an agrarian society, but also an agrarian society, and many farmers were also craftsmen, such as carpenters, blacksmiths, silversmiths, stonemasons, etc., and some provided raw materials or semi-finished products for handicraft cities. Historically, China's countryside was inhabited by workers and peasants. She said that only by studying this issue clearly can we truly understand the root cause and significance of the current revival of Chinese handicrafts.
Intervene in the construction of art villages
Over the years, art township was built as a hot word.
Fang Lili's focus on the construction of the art community began with a study of Beijing's 798 Art District and Songzhuang. In 2006, she was commissioned by the Beijing Municipal Government to study the 798 Art District, and later by the National Center for Contemporary Art, to do research projects on the 798 Art District and Songzhuang. At that time, she was concerned that artists gathered together not only to create, but also to construct a local landscape, and then, the landscape itself became a huge work of art, allowing people to enter it, receive contemporary art education and blend with art, and finally form the trend of the times when art was lived.
In recent years, more and more people have gone into the countryside to explore the combination of art and rural construction, promote the revival of rural culture, and create a poetic new space. Artist Qu Yan carried out the social practice of "art promoting village rejuvenation" in Xu Village, Heshun County, Shanxi Province, and Qingtian Village, Shunde, Guangdong Province; Jin Le founded the Shijiezi Art Museum in Shijiezi Village, Qin'an County, Gansu Province; Zuo Jing protected and used the traditional buildings of Wengji Brown Village in Jingmai Mountain, Lancang County, Yunnan Province; Lin Zhenglu carried out the "Everyone is an Artist" public welfare oil painting art teaching in Longtan Village, Pingnan County, Fujian Province, attracting "cultural and creative immigrants" and local villagers to return with creative industries, and traditional villages became containers for creative "Silicon Valley" and new lifestyles.
Group photo with local women during a fieldwork in Miaozhai, Guizhou, in 2006
"When artists enter the scene of life from the art museum, intervene in social construction, including in rural construction, anthropologists meet artists, because anthropologists have always been on the scene of life, always working in the rural fields. There is a very profound social background behind the encounter between these two teams, which represents a huge transformation of society, which is the alliance of the times calling for high technology and high humanities and high ecology, and the land of this alliance is in the countryside. Through this alliance, humanity will find new modes of production and new ways of life, which is a very exciting social practice. Fang Lili said.
When artists come to the countryside, it means that rural construction will become a new fashion of this era. She believes that the future fashion must be green, ecological, distinctive, local experience, can experience the social trends of the great natural scenery, and the characteristics of these trends are the characteristics of the countryside, not the characteristics of the city. As art anthropologists, we should pay attention to such a cultural phenomenon and artistic trend, and form an alliance with artists in the new round of rural cultural reconstruction. In art villages, artists provide imagination and creativity, and anthropologists provide traditional culture and indigenous knowledge. In this process, the artist also has to become a quasi-anthropologist.
People don't necessarily naturally like to live in cities. In Fang Lili's view, in the future, due to the convenience of transportation and logistics, the popularity of new energy and networks, we do not need to concentrate in large cities with collective heating, collective power supply, collective enjoyment of entertainment and consumption activities, but can be scattered in any different ecological and cultural spaces to study, work and live. Moreover, through the Internet circle of friends, we seem to be back to the traditional acquaintance society. In such a new social model, the countryside should have more prospects for development than the cities. This new social form is the ecological society. As a result, villages rich in traditional culture and with the possibility of diverse development will become a usable feng shui treasure for human beings to think about and create the future. Our rural revitalization today may be an opportunity for us to find a new future prospect for humanity that is green and sustainable.
In recent years, she has published works such as "From Native China to Ecological China" and "Post-Agricultural Society", proposing the concept of "post-agricultural society". Post-agrarian society is not a low-level repetition of an agrarian society, but a social form of higher ecological civilization linked to Industry 3.0 and 4.0. The post-agrarian countryside is a more fashionable and artistic village, where farmers, scientists, artists, musicians, designers, etc. will live. The countryside has become a fashion center, an information center, and a creative center. At present, more and more experiential and immersive cultural performances are placed in the rural landscape idyllic environment, which is very popular with urban tourists, reflecting this trend.
Learn from the peasants with humility
Fang Lili said that her learning was out. Every time she went to the countryside to investigate, she walked all the way and took notes all the way. The richness of rural culture fascinates her, and the simple kindness of the villagers makes her moved and concerned, but she also deeply feels that there is a bias in society: many people do not understand the peasants and do not regard the peasants' culture as culture.
Once, she visited a Li ethnic style tourist village built by a company in Hainan, which was originally an ancient village with a thousand-year history, and the songs sung by the villagers to tourists were new songs created by teachers outside, and the content of the songs had nothing to do with the village. Q: Why don't you sing the villagers' own songs? The villagers answered: No one has ever consulted them.
As a result, Li Fangli realized that many enterprise capital going to the countryside for development will only use the space of the village to find ways to relocate the peasants. They don't take advantage of the culture here. Therefore, she suggested to the local government and developers that to engage in rural tourism development, it is necessary to make comprehensive use of local culture and lifestyle, and not to dismember the comprehensive and rich cultural ancient villages.
In 2008, Fang Lili conducted fieldwork in a Tibetan pastoral area
She teaches in the classroom or organizes art township construction seminars, and one of the phrases she often says is "learn humbly." She said that when we enter a new cultural context, you don't understand that culture, and in the countryside, even if you are illiterate, he is the master of his culture, and you have to learn from him. In addition to our common culture, many villages and ethnic minorities we face also have a lot of local knowledge that we are not familiar with, and our rural revitalization is to excavate these precious local knowledge for our use today, and the first thing in the process of excavation is to humbly study.
In rural construction, artists may be more concerned about how to bring art to the countryside, but Fang Lili believes that it is more important to discover the beauty of the countryside and discover the aesthetics of the villagers' lives. When we go to rebuild and awaken a certain sense of place, this sense of place is also the most attractive place for the construction of artistic villages. If there is this sense of place in different places, China's countryside and cities will become more beautiful.
Take good care of the cultural gene pool
Li Li, who inspected the Chinese side, also found that in the wave of industrialization and urbanization, some farmers no longer like their own culture.
More than a decade ago, she went to Guzui Village in Fengqi Town, Luochuan County, Shaanxi Province, and saw farmers hurriedly hoping to throw away their ancestral old family items.
Visiting The village of Guota, 50 kilometers from the county seat of Ansai, visited the peasant painter and paper-cutting expert Xue Yuqin, and thought that in the remote mountain villages, he would see a richer and more authentic northern Shaanxi culture. But the strange thing is that Xue Yuqin's family posted a New Year painting of Song He Yannian bought from the city and a photo of a film and television star, as well as a photographic picture of a beach house. Ask her why she doesn't stick her own paintings or paper cuts at home? She said that her paper cuts and paintings were ugly, and the paintings she bought were real and beautiful. Fang Lili asked her again, then why do you still have to cut and paint? Xue Yuqin said that it is like foreigners and foreigners like you. Her paintings and paper cuts are often sold in cultural centers to sell for some money. It seems that modernization has rapidly changed the aesthetic perceptions of the locals. They were catching up with the fashion and "pretty" of the townspeople.
Fang Lili also saw another phenomenon, in some elaborate "folk art villages", "ecological museums" and "folk culture tourism areas", where folk traditional culture has become a cultural tourism program for tourists and experts to perform to a certain extent. Folk culture gradually loses its authenticity, which is closely related to nature and folk beliefs. For example, her investigation of Xiaocheng Village in Yanchuan County, northern Shaanxi, and Longjia Miao Village in Suojia Township, Liuzhi Special Zone, Guizhou Province, the "Ecological Museum", all see this trend. This made her a little regretful, but in turn, this is not necessarily a means of protecting rural cultural inheritance in the context of modernization. That is to say, there are many driving forces for the restoration of tradition, on the one hand, from the needs of the spiritual life of the people themselves; on the other hand, from the needs of the market; after the state attaches importance to the protection of non-genetic inheritance, it has added another government force. In the future, we will see more and more traditional cultural spaces constructed with folk art, and the materials used for construction are local human resources accumulated over generations.
In 2004, Fang Lili conducted fieldwork in rural northern Shaanxi
Fang Lili believes that in the future ecological civilization society, these humanistic resources are priceless treasures that can be re-recognized. Whether the human resources are abundant will also become an important indicator of whether a country's national strength is strong.
She said that people have to use mirrors to see what they look like. There are so many great things in the rural tradition that we don't have to throw away, but with a little modification, maybe it's another way ahead of its time. She hopes that artists and all those who love the countryside will "bring a mirror" to the countryside to help farmers see the beauty of their own culture.
She gave the example of the artist Zuo Jing doing art township construction in Jingmai Mountain, Yunnan. After the local Brown villagers became rich in the Pu'er tea industry, they wanted to rebuild their houses according to the appearance of city villas. Zuo Jing's team repaired four local old houses, the appearance of the house remained unchanged, only the internal facilities, roof lighting, space utilization, etc. were renovated, and the materials were all local. The house after the transformation is very beautiful. Two of them serve as a homestay for receiving visitors, one as a rural workstation, and the other as a small exhibition hall named Onki, which displays local Brown folk customs, old objects, photos, videos, and works of art from cultural activities. After the villagers looked at it, they found that their culture was so beautiful!
Talking with Fang Lili, reading her academic articles, and listening to her academic reports, you can feel the academic passion and the social care of humanistic intellectuals.
The value of scholars lies in being able to provide new perspectives on society and insight into the future; or to rediscover and return to the public eye the values that already exist but are obscured by blind spots in thinking and understanding. Fang Lili's exploration of the vitality of Chinese culture and the available cultural resources, the foresight of the revival of handicrafts in the post-industrial civilization era, and the revelation of the ecological and cultural values of rural diversity are undoubtedly important. From then on, we will have one more pair of eyes to see the tradition and see the value of the countryside and its culture in the future.
Fang Lili profile
Fang Lili, former director of the Institute of Art Anthropology of the China Academy of Arts, is currently the Distinguished Chief Professor of the School of Arts of Southeast University, the director of the Institute of Art Anthropology and Sociology of Southeast University, the doctoral supervisor, the visiting senior researcher of the School of Humanities of Durham University, the president of the Chinese Society of Art Anthropology, a member of the National Intangible Cultural Heritage Expert Committee, and a consulting expert of the UNESCO China Committee.
Author: Cheng Tianci, reporter of Farmers Daily and China Rural Network
Producer: Du Lanping Editor: Du Juan (Trainee)