An overview of Chinese festivals
3 min readChinese Culture: Festivals is a small book, but it contains a lot of contents.
After I agreed to write Chinese Culture: Festivals,I always felt a little nervous in the course of writing. Chinese festivals are a theme on which a great deal can be written, but it is also really a complex theme. All Chinese people have experienced festivals personally, but few people can clearly explain the history, connotations and meanings of festivals in the flow of time or grasp the current situation and trend of festivals’ development. SinceI began to engage in folk culture studies,I have been participating in the work of promoting collection and arrangement of records about Chinese festivals and their protection and inheritance, but the longer I worked and the more I learned about and participated in festivals, the more deeply I felt the extraordinariness of Chinese festivals and the morecautiously I expressed my opinions. Fortunately, in this process, many teachers and friends always encouraged and supported me.
Chinese Culture: Festivals is targeted at overseas readers, so how to concisely and accurately display the scenes of Chinese festivals in a relatively comprehensive manner puzzled me the most in the writing process. Similar past books mostly follow the time order. This writing order makes people feel the sequence is clear, but the times of some Chinese festivals are determined according to different calendars and are unfixed. The periods of some festivals even span several months and even several years. Meanwhile.
many past books about festivals mainly introduce festivals such as the Spring Festival, the Tomb-sweeping Day, the Dragon Boat Festival and the Mid-autumn Festival and seldom describe modern festivals and minority ethnic groups’ festivals. In terms of contents, most of them introduce the history of festivals, but few introduce the current situation. In view of these reasons, this book does not follow the time order as the writing framework but is structured according to different festival themes to better demonstrate the diversity of Chinese festivals and the consistency of their internal themes. Meanwhile, in the course of festival selection and writing,I also tried to strike a balance between history and reality, between tradition and modernity and between the Han people and ethnic minorities, but it is up to readers to evaluate how fruitful the endeavor is.
Though this book has a new framework and sticks to a certain writing direction, we cannot say it is a completely original creation.I absorbed the festival research results of many scholars including Li Song, Xiao Fang, Zhang Shishan, Liu Zongdi, Yue Yongyiand Zhang Bo into the book. Meanwhile, because I was responsible for pushing forward the compilation of Chinese Festival Annals at the Center for Ethnic and Folk Literature and Art Development, Ministry of Culture,P.R.C.,I was in a favorable position to gain special advantages.I made use of a lot of resources accumulated in work. Li Sijin, Zhang Congjun, Wang Jianmin, Zhang Shishan, Ao Qi, Yang Xiaonan, Liu Mubin, Xiao Kunbing, etc. provided many beautiful pictures for this book, which greatly enhance the book’s readability.I would like to express my thanks to the above institution, teachers and friends.
Chinese Culture: Festivals are far more spectacular than what was described in my book.I hope this book can open a window for readers so they can personally experience the charm of Chinese festival in the days to come!
