The Rich Tapestry of Chinese Folk Arts: From Ancient Origins to Modern Preservation

The splendid and diverse folk arts of China's various ethnic groups can be traced back to the ancient civilization of the Chinese nation. Our ancestors created primitive arts such as colored pottery of the Yangshao culture in the Yellow River Valley and jade objects of the Hemudu culture in the Yangtze River Valley as far back as seven to eight thousand years ago. However, the primitive arts that have survived to this day are almost all based on tangible materials, which can be referred to as 'arts and crafts,' while intangible arts and those based on perishable materials such as tapestry and painting cannot be passed down to the present. Agricultural civilization was the cradle and soil for the emergence and development of folk arts today. Folk arts inherited the thinking and artistic modes of primitive arts and constantly innovated and developed, reaching a high level during the long period of agricultural civilization. Folk arts, as well as general folk culture, nurture, cultivate, and embody the spirit of Chinese folk culture.

As Chinese culture is diverse and integrated, Chinese folk arts are also made up of multiple elements. Each ethnic group or community has its own small tradition of folk art due to different living environments and cultural traditions. However, folk arts of different ethnic groups, especially those that live in geographically adjacent areas or have frequent cultural exchanges, or those that have migrated or aggregated due to war, natural disasters, or other reasons, often influence and blend with each other. Due to the regionalism of agricultural civilization, the development of folk arts of each ethnic group in the vast territory of China shows regional and imbalanced characteristics. However, this regionalism and imbalance make it possible for folk arts of different ethnic groups to communicate and blend with each other. After the formation of the Han ethnicity, which became the main ethnic group of the Chinese nation, its productivity developed faster and higher than other ethnic groups. In the exchange of national economy and culture, the folk arts of the Han ethnicity have more or less influenced the folk arts of some minority ethnic groups, and conversely, the folk arts of minority ethnic groups have continuously been introduced to the Han people and have influenced Han folk arts.

From the perspective of anthropology, although folk arts are arts of the agricultural civilization era, they carry the blood of primitive arts in their genes. They are not only driven by the psychological needs and spiritual movements of the creators, but their utilitarian purposes are also very obvious. The meaning behind any piece of folk art, that is, the symbolic meaning we talk about today, is closely related to the survival, development, and thinking mode of the ethnic group or community, and is handed down by convention and oral transmission within the ethnic group and community. Although the author injects his own thoughts, imagination, talent, and meaning into each piece of folk art, overall, individuality is fused or eliminated in group identity, because in such social situations, any individual's thoughts and meanings are still nothing but cells or extensions of group thoughts and meanings. This is why the basic characteristic of folk art is group identity and typification, rather than individualization.

Generally speaking, folk art is the art of the common people. It is created and owned by the common people and loved by them. In an article, the author once said that colored pottery is the art of women. In fact, tracing back to its roots, all folk arts are women's arts. Paper cutting, tapestry, body decoration, clothing...most are the work of women, all of which are buried with or express the psychological accumulation and life demands of women, embellishing their bleak and happy life boats. Men's participation in the creation of folk art is a relatively late phenomenon.

In ethnic groups where social stratification phenomenon is relatively severe, cultural stratification also exists, and the folk art there is only created and owned by the lower-class people, while the upper-class society has its own art. Although the art of the upper-class society, or the so-called high art, can only develop and improve by drawing nutrients and soul from folk art, this is a general rule of artistic development.

In the context of the global economic globalization and the accelerated urbanization and modernization in China, the traditional folk arts of agricultural civilization, which rely on survival, are facing an unprecedented accelerated disappearance. At the beginning of the 21st century, rescuing the national folk cultural heritage-the root of the nation-has been recognized by people from all walks of life and industries. Under this global trend, Guizhou Ethnic Publishing House edited and published a series of 'Treasures of Ethnic Folk Art' books, which select the most exciting and valuable varieties of ethnic folk art and preserve them in a text and picture format with exquisite binding and printing. It not only fills the gap in national culture but also contributes significantly to the cause of Chinese national culture.

(Liu Xicheng: former Vice Chairman of the China Association of Folk Literature and Art, member of the National Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Expert Committee, researcher of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, famous literary critic and folk artist.)