Recovering Chinese Folklore: Han Folk Literature and Folk Religion

Abstract

Chinese folklore is a field encompassing a wide spectrum of folk culture including literature and religion. Chinese folk literature is spread by educated folklorists and, on the opposite end of the spectrum, Chinese folk religion is the realm of the masses. Chinese literature was taken as an academic discipline in the early 1920s but its popularity was later diminished in academia because of the political ideology at the time. Folk culture has lost a lot of documentation since the years of World War II and the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s. In addition, the main problem is that Chinese people misunderstood folk religion, and it has been misused for commercial purposes, which has negatively impacted folk religion’s reputation. Nowadays, young Chinese are more open minded to explore traditional culture so it is a good time to bring Chinese folk culture back to the community. In this project, I will be focusing on exploring the design potential in terms of encouraging people to interact with, and increase their understanding of Chinese folk religion. Folk religion and folk literature are important parts of Chinese traditional culture and I wish to help revive them thorough doing research and design.