"The Return of the Folk and the Making of Culture in Yan'an, China" by Ka-ming Wu

Ka-ming Wu

Deposited 2007

Abstract
This dissertation examines the cultural discourses and practices of the "folk" in Yan'an, China. It addresses the rise of the folk in modern China as historically been associated with modern nationalism, the Communist revolution, commercialization and, most recently, national focus of cultural heritage. Considering the recent resurgence of folk discourses and practices, this dissertation argues that the folk is not a nostalgic leftover of China opening up to rampant development but a cultural screen, which seriously obscures the widespread destitution in the rural areas.

Yan'an in Shaanxi province was once the birthplace of Chinese Communism. Today the Yellow River civilization discourse has remade it into a new rural space where folk culture is allegedly found. I look specifically at three types of folk practices in Yan'an: namely paper-cutting, Shaanbei storytelling and spirit mediumship. I ask how rural villagers perceive the coming back of tradition. I examine how they participate in a profitable cultural economy where folk customs and images are commodities. Through personal experiences of paper-cutting "folk artists," female spirit mediums and male blind storytellers, I examine the power of touch and the power of voice in rural communities. I argue the return of the folk entails new forms of senses, corporeal experiences and embodiments as hand-making in folk art, touching in healing rituals and voices in storytelling become valorized. The folk thus on the one hand engages politico economic transformation as it rides on existing rural and urban polarization. On the other hand, it is a process that re-organizes the everyday sensuality of the people.

The return of the folk is about changing ruling techniques. The postsocialist state, through local Cultural Bureaus, actively draws the boundary for and participates in the making of folk culture. Through promoting cultural heritage projects, staging cultural events and allowing the revival of religious practices, I argue that the postsocialist state's cultural policy is complicit in the covering up of its institutional neglect of rural despair and discontent.