Ethnic Memory, Cultural Identity And The Protection Of The Intangible Cultural Heritage Of The Zhuang People

With globalization increasingly becoming an important background and inner factor in every nation's social life and cultural development around the world, the protection of the intangible cultural heritage has became a worldwide subject. Especially for the economically less developed nations, they have no choice but to fling themselves into the great economic wave of the world with an urgent hope to develop their economies, improve their material life and quickly step into the material paradise of modernization. However, once the"Pandora's box"of modernization is activated, such foreign cultures as Western culture, the social mainstream culture, the elite's culture and the modern mass-culture have together jumped out and staged a violent impact on the traditional ethnic culture. In this time, the human cultural diversity is unprecedentedly harmed, the weaker cultures are in the danger of being assimilated by the stronger and the ethnic traits being removed. Among them, the intangible cultural heritage, which plays an essential role in the existence and development of the culture of every nation or ethnic group, is the deep-going accumulation of the cultural tradition and social life which many a generation of the particular ethnic group have practised, contains the cultural genes and historical memories of the particular nation or ethnic group, and therefore is an important bond supporting the ethnic identity.With the combined action of industrialization, urbanization, commercialization and globalization as the higher stage of modernization, the Chinese society and culture are just thrown into an overall transition with violent change. Because of the impact of the modern and foreign cultures, China's social environment and life style are in the quick transition from a traditional one with the traditional agriculture, rural villages, and natural economy on the whole to a modern society with the modern science & technology, industries, cities, and commodity economy on the whole, so the existence and development of the intangible cultural heritage is confronted with an unprecedented crisis. Because of this, just in order to protect the ethnic memory and the cultural bond of the ethnic identity, the protection of the intangible cultural heritage, as a necessary trend, has became a serious and important event. For the Zhuang people...