Cultural Ecology Investigation Report On Nigugu In Xun County Henan Province

Nigugu is a traditional handicraft popular in temple fairs during the first month of the lunar year in Xun county, Henan province. The temple fair in Xun county is most famous in northern China, and was listed among Chinese Folk Cultural Protecting Pilot Projects in 2004, and was selected into the first batch of National Intangible Cultural Heritage list on May 232006, and later into Henan Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2007.The Xun temple fair originated from temples in Mountains Dapi and Fuqiu hundreds of years ago. People go to the fair to sacrifice gods of these two mountains. Besides, women buy Nigugu to pray that they have a baby as soon as possible.We need to protect folk customs as a whole, including Nigugu, so that traditional handicrafts could be better inherited and developed. Otherwise, the traditional handicrafts with local culture will disappear. And what’s more important is that we need amounts of people with knowledge of tradition, aesthetics, and social responsibility. I hereby want to show two of my ideas:Firstly, the tradition temple fair of Xun County is closely related with Nigugu, so we should keep them together as a whole part to protect.Secondly, we should not change or "innovate" the shape and colours of Nigugu. Otherwise, it can’t keep its original features.Third, the local government should often communicate with inheritors and learn about what they need, so that the plans about the protection about Nigugu could be carried out. Besides, special budget should be made for the protection work and be inspected by the public.Maybe the ideas are not fresh, and other people have talked about it before. I just sincerely hope that my thesis could raise up some methods to protect Nigugu, and do my best to promote the protecting work of our Chinese intangible cultural heritage.