The Changing Of Folk Belief

With the great success of reform and the social transition, folk belief which had been hurt badly after 1949, revived again and developed fast;meanwhile, they have been becoming popular since the early 1980s. This has drawn common concerns of scholars. The study of folk belief has realistic significance, particularly under the background of building new rural culture.This article was launched in the base of a cross-village investigation. The methods are field investigation and documents. The paper analyzes the changes of a regional belief center—Baiyun Temple—since 1949 and the surviving logic of folk belief in the modern society, in order to explore the inner relationship between the traditional culture and the modern society change. Especially, from the angle of cultural change, it clearly researches on the changing rule of folk belief can be beneficial to the construction of rural culture research.This article consists of five parts:Part one is the introduction to the reasons, significance, basic problems and research methods.Part two is the general overview of the villages, including the environment of geography, economy and culture in the village.Part three reviews the religious policy since 1949 and recounts the history of Baiyun Temple. It is divided into three periods.Part four discusses the reasons and features of the revival of folk belief and its tendency in the future, including the reasons of the revival of folk belief, the changing of institution, uncertainty of modern society and the requirement of the masses of villages. The essential features of the revival of folk belief are a process of varying and adjusting continuously around the social change. In this course, the country plays a leading role, and the folk authority is the actual controller. Therefore, the folk belief unavoidably adjusts itself to the social change.At last, on the base of rule of culture change, this article suggests reconstructing folk belief in the course of building the new rural culture, namely making the folk belief adjust the socialistic spiritual civilization.