228
BOOK REVIEWS
This book is one of the gems of a vast movement. Between the two world wars, Chinese scholars took a great interest in the study of ethnology and folklore. The two most important groups were in Peking University and in the Sun Yat-sen University of Canton. After the May Fourth Movement, Chinese intellectuals fought against their traditional culture and its Confucian interpretation, and looked toward the West.
Ethnology was one of the by-products of this new fashion for the Occident and Science. Dissatisfied with a mere copy of Western culture, some people realised at this time that they had, in China itself, a whole culture buried in scorn, which deserved to become part of modern culture. And the movement towards a mass culture, in the early thirties, used for propaganda both by left-wing intellectuals and by missionaries, saw it as a gold mine to be exploited.
This interest in folk culture was not something new in China. In the Ming dynasty, scholars scandalously proclaimed certain popular novels and plays to be masterpieces comparable to famous classics, while the staid scholars did not even grant them the dignity of literature. Moreover, in Chinese literary history, a keen interest in folk literature has periodically risen in attempts to revive a stereotyped academism. However, in the XXth century, this movement was brought about by ethnologists, and not by avant-garde scholars of literature.
This ethnological interest had a certain influence. Several modern poets used the tone of popular songs; Lao She studied the folklore of Peking and recalled it in his novels; Wen Yi-tuo used ethnological data to explain the Songs of Ch'u and thus gave more insight into this famous anthology than philological interpretations had ever done.
Among the materials brought by Chinese ethnologists, the Choice of "Yang ke" from Ting Hsien is now a classic, and its translation is very welcome. It was part of a general survey made by a team on rural life in that district, situated about 128 miles south of Peking. The original meaning of "Yang ke" is folk songs sung while transplanting the young rice shoots. But it took on a broader sense: short operas performed by amateurs in villages, with music and singing mainly drawn from folk songs. In Peking and elsewhere, these short scenes were sometimes sung by actors on stilts, in processions.
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228
BOOK REVIEWS
This book is one of the gems of a vast movement. Between the two world wars, Chinese scholars took a great interest in the study of ethnology and folklore. The two most important groups were in Peking University and in the Sun Yat-sen University of Canton. After the May Fourth Movement, Chinese intellectuals fought against their traditional culture and its Confucian interpretation, and looked toward the West.
Ethnology was one of the by-products of this new fashion for the Occident and Science. Dissatisfied with a mere copy of Western culture, some people realised at this time that they here had, in China itself, a whole culture buried in scorn, which deserved to be- come part of modern culture. And the movement towards a mass culture, in the early thirties, used for propaganda both by left wing intellectuals and by missionaries, saw it as a gold mine to be exploited.
This interest in folk culture was not something new in China. In the Ming dynasty, scholars scandalously proclaimed certain po- pular novels and plays to be masterpieces comparable to famous classics, while the staid scholars not even granted them the dignity of literature. Moreover, in Chinese literary history, a keen interest in folk literature has periodically risen in attempts to revive a ster- eotyped academism. However, in the XXth century, this movement was brought about by ethnologists, and not by avant-garde scholars of literature.
This ethnological interest had a certain influence. Several modern poets used the tone of popular songs; Lao She studied the folklore of Peking and recalled it in his novels; Wen Yi-tuo - used ethnological data to explain the Songs of Ch'u and thus gave more insight to this famous anthology than philological inter- pretations had ever done.
Among the materials brought by Chinese ethnologists, the Choice of "Yang ke" from Ting Hsien is now a classic, and its translation is very welcome. It was part of a general survey made by a team on rural life in that district, situated about 128 miles south of Peking. The original meaning of “Yang ke" is folk songs sung while trans- planting the young rice shoots. But it took on a broader sense: short operas performed by amateurs in villages, with music and sing- ing mainly drawn from folk songs. In Peking and elsewhere, these short scenes were sometimes sung by actors on stilts, in processions.
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