Research On The Revival Of Folk Beliefs

With the great success of reform and the social transition,folk beliefs which had been hurt badly after 1949, revived again and developed fast. Meanwhile, they have been becoming popular since the early 1980s. Just as the French philosopher Sartre's saying "What exists is reasonable", we must seriously consider about reasons of folk beliefs'revival and analyse the social structural factors that result in the phenomenon .In this paper, the author uses Z temple as a case and studies the specific needs of three groups that Z temple meets by communicating with priests, local government officials and believers who promote the temple'development. We can see that folk beliefs reflect on different interests of each group based on social status and by analysing all interviews. Folk beliefs meet specific demand for different groups. It provides priests with spiritual pursuit and jobs. However, we can see that folk beliefs reflect on different interests of each group based on social status and by analysing all interviews. Folk beliefs meet specific demand for different groups. It provides priests with spiritual pursuit and jobs, however, provides political elites with expanding their social capital and goodwill for promoting ,ect. Political elite suffort the rebuilding of Z temple privately because of their special social identity, They often use some other reasons to support ,such as pushing up the economic growth , preserving traditional folk cultural heritage. Folk beliefs also meet economic elite'pursuing wealth aspiration and make themselves more calm when they meet some difficulties. Meanwhile,ordinary believers back up the revival of Z temple to make their daily life goes well. In short, people who belong to different social group and have distinct motivation promote the revival of folk beliefs. Of course, folk beliefs also integrated itsef to meet each group diverse requirements.Finally, we draw the conclusion that social structural factors that are brought with social transition make diverse groups choose folk beliefs meeting their psychological needs. Meanwhile, the revival of Folk beliefs which play new roles in mordern society is the reflection of social problems .