The "Eaten" Shigong Mountain

With the constantly increasing development speed and scale of urbanization, the soaring demand for stone materials in real estate and urban infrastructure construction has boosted the quarry market dramatically. Quarries have been springing up rapidly everywhere in areas with an abundance of stone materials. But cost of all this is the mountainous ecology. However, stone mining in those mountains that have both ecological and cultural implications, will not only bring unrecoverable ecological consequences, but great impact and long-term effects on local social and cultural structure.This study aims to present and interpret a mountain mining case being ignored by the academic world. This paper chooses Shigong Mountain, which is located in northern Anhui Province, as the study object, trying to reveal the causes and the consequences of the mountain’s perish. It is because that in traditional society, Shigong Mountain is profoundly connected to temple culture, temple fair heritage and people’s spiritual world, the perish of Shigong Mountain decides the transition of local worship. And the auction of overall mining rights of Shigong Mountain in 2008, not just quickened the perish of the mountain, but also prompted series of "eccentric relation" in rural society. Therefore, this study also emphasizes cultural consequences caused by the mountain’s perish and tries to analyze the hidden causes. Based on these analysis, this study aims to answer the following questions: why the tradition of not-dare to dig the middle mountain which has been observed for thousands of years has been deconstructed? And what are the ecological and religious effects that the perish of Shigong Mountain has caused?Surrounding two dimensions of stone resources’capitalization and folk religions’ evolution, this study will unfold this study as a story with thick description, and firstly describe the whole story, then try to explain the comprehensive causes of the story. This paper divides the mining course into three periods of which is the resources’marketization operation that marks the complete perish of the whole mountain. Following the review of the mountain’s disappearance is to present the change of the village temple fair by depicting the wrecking of old temples and building off the new one. It indicates that the demise of Shigong mountain means non-reversible damage to the ecosystem, then the thorough tear-down of the old temple as well as the cultural and traditional rupture. As for the new temple’s rebuilding after that seems like it could post some positive impact to the rural community and awaken its memory, however, it is just reconstituting alienated traditions. At last, this article will make a sociological explanation and analysis on the mountain’s perish and temples’ fall and rebuilding. This paper holds that the comprehensive causes of the complete perish of Shigong Mountain are the improper meddling of special factors such as the lack of people’s resistance, three paradoxes and the loss of old temple’s holiness. And in disenchanted modern society, secularization of the religion and collective memory loss on religion result in the decrease of people’s reliance on the transcendental world, thus lead to the fall of the old temple’s holiness. What’s more, the essence of the new temple’s rebuilding is actually a kind of commercial exploration to religion. Therefore, if the seemingly reviving tradition can be rightly integrate with living world of the local residents is questionable.The perish of Shigong Mountain and the rural societal changes that come with it is an epitome of ecological and social problems in the modernization of China. Great awareness should be attached to destroying a massive quantity of mountains and exploiting mountainous resources. The natural resources and even the cultural traditions that affect people’s life have been sacrificed for sake of development, which is actually worthy of reflection when considering humans’ sustainable development.