Local Folk Cultural Elites And The Renaissance Of Folk Memorial Ritual

Is the folk memorial ritual a tradition with long history and fixed pattern, participated and decided by the mass? Is the renaissance of folk memorial ritual after chinese cultural revolution a recovery of folk cultural memory? The purpose of this study, is to examine how the inheritance and transformation of the folk memorial ritual carried out in the process of this renaissance. Building on the case study of the renaissance of folk memorial ritual in Tianshui Fuxi Temple, where the people worship chinese civilisation ancestor Fuxi, we conclude that since the reform and opening up, the tradition of folk memorial ritual has been in the process of constant invention and creation. And it is the local folk cultural elites that invented and created it. These elites are fans of folk culture and known as the experts of folk knowledge, communicating with officials and businessmen in order to get their support for the folk memorial ritual, just as the fonction of local gentry before 1949.With the unofficial backgroud, they act as leaders of the mass and inherit the structure of traditional folk memorial ritual, but adding their own originalities and other folk cultural forms in the details of the ritual by using their own interpersonal network, thus invented the tradition. As the movement of Oral and Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection, the group of these folk cultural elites are changing. With more and more retired officials in this group, folk ritual takes on new symbolic system and official ideology. This research is based on the fieldwork of the ritual process in Fuxi Temple from 2006 to 2010, interviews of the folk cultural elites and privite and public historical documents.