From Represent Identity To Representation Of Identity

Hezhen has the second small population in China, inhabiting the convergence of the Heilong River, Songhua River and the Wusuli River. They have their own language without character, developing great oral tradition during their long history. Yimakan,as their nation epic, which is the unique memory about the history, chanting the nation heroes, passed down by the singers from generation to generation. When it comes to the modern society, the traditional life of Hezhen was crashed,the cultural system was also torn up, while the Yimakan was hard to pass down. The Hezhen people with a modern look in daily life, feel anxious about losing identity, and eager to find a symbol to sign their identity.In this background, Yimakan was discovered and noticed again.In this essay 1-4chapters mainly expound the development of Yimakan during the representing identity, the cultural ecological environment, texts from oral tradition, the formulas and the motifs are included. The process of Yimakan's development is also that of the nation's emotion and narration identified by the cultural tradition. As a result, Yimakan must be the carrier to represent the nation's common emotion and unity.The last chapter is to expand on that Yimakan was set on the edge of the culture system in the modern society, while the nation needs a symbol to sign their identity. It's no doubt that Yimakan is competent because of its growing up in the nation's cultural land, while how to return is really a problem. The project of the Intangible Culture Heritage protection in China supply a good circumstance,and the need of the nation's identity is the impetus, which is also the cultural awareness of the nation.Oral Tradition Poetry Theory and traditional motif analysis method are both used in the essay to do the double-level reading. We tried to establish a new aesthetic criticism standard to revalue the oral epic. Meanwhile, the essay attempts to maintain a point in the argument on the question that weather Yimakan is a nation epic or not from the function angle.In practice, the essay expects to show the efficiency on the community -protection level, through analyzing the Yimakan's inheriting and the intangible heritage culture protection.