Folk Beliefs And People Living Research

It has been a long time for Chinese folk beliefs to be belittled as feudal superstition by the official and intellectual. In recent years, folk beliefs have attracted the attention of folklore, anthropology and history scholars at home and abroad because of its Chinese characteristics. A number of-well-known analytical models have appeared which are mostly concentrated in the "structure", "symbol" of Chinese folk beliefs. They consider folk beliefs and rituals as cultural phenomenon or social phenomenon, instead of investing them on people's real life. So most of these models are difficult to answer:what characteristics do the folk beliefs and rituals show in current Chinese population, especially in rural areas? Why do folk beliefs and rituals, especially in rural and poor areas of China, revived after the destruction of Cultural Revolution as well as the popularization of science today?In this paper, Qishan county of Shanxi province is chosen out as the fieldwork area to carry out the study trying to answer these questions. Since ancient times, this place has very popular folk beliefs and rituals, where a variety of local folk beliefs and rituals permeate people's daily lives with harmony. Therefore, its folk beliefs and rituals exist more as living phenomenon. We should base our study on the "living world" concept, and go back to the specific life situations of people to focus on the analysis of micro level and local people's subjective experience. From this standpoint, this study takes the folklore study approach of "whole life" to investigate local bel iefs and ri tuals after the founding of PRC with synchronic perspective of. The research relies mainly on fieldwork—with full use of participant observation, deep interviews and so on, supplemented by literature methods.This Paper introduces the communications between human and god/ghost which are carried out with different kinds of rituals in Qishan's daily life. The first chapter introduces the ecological and cultural environment, especially its folk beliefs system of co-existence of human, god and ghost, as a full background. ChapterⅡshows:during the Cultural Revolution, as the external force from the state interrupted the practice of local folk beliefs, the communications between human and god/ghost turned to "background" operation, while after the Cultural Revolution, they soon revived, and formed a new relationship with the government. It is in the "interruption" and" continuation" that the relationship of local folk beliefs, rituals and the state was presented. The third chapter describes the time and space of the communications between human and god/ghost, which points out that the local folk beliefs and rituals switches between "routine"-the practices carried out by individuals or families in their daily life at home especially when the nature and life encounter changes, and "non-routine"-the practices carried out in the holy space of temple and temple fair. Chapter IV introduces the subjects of local folk beliefs and rituals, such as the faithful, the teacher, the priest and the master, telling the main access of their identities and different roles they play in the communications between human and god/ghost. Chapter V describes two most important rituals "redeeming ritual" reflecting the communication between human and god, and "scattering food" ritual reflecting the communication between human and ghost, to display the mutual complementation of folk beliefs and rituals in local life world.Based on those analyses, the study points out, the prosperity of local folk beliefs and rituals is precisely because of their function to human in their real life. The communications between human and god/ghost arousing by the beliefs of spirits in fact play the role of "shock bumper" in local people's mind when risks, disasters and uncertainties appear. The communications between human and god/ghost are reflects of rearrangement of actual order in people's subjective world. It is in virtue of the beliefs in spirits and corresponding ritual behaviors that local people created their unique living world.