Wujiagou Folk Tales
01 · Historical Records
In the 1980s more than a thousand folk stories and over a thousand folk songs had already been found in Wujiagou village, and the village was therefore named a folk story village by the institutions concerned. These legends have a long origin: a myth such as A Man Marries a Dog was for the first time discovered among the Wujiagou stories, from which can be seen the situation of the primitive society when wild fire did harm and the dog was a totem; Digging Through the Ridge conveys information about the worship of procreation; the legend that Li Zicheng came to the Wudang mountain area was unheard of outside; and though The Qin Dynasty Scholar Died Today is a contemporary work, its rich traditional colour is a clear annual ring for understanding the development of stories in the area.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Wujiagou village is an administrative village of Liuliping town in the west of Danjiangkou, Hubei, adjoining the Danjiang reservoir area, and has long had the saying nine gullies and eighteen hollows, a hundred and eight forked paths, every fork with a household. The ecology of Wujiagou folk stories is vivid; some old people still take fantasy stories such as Meeting a Ghost at the Lin Family Village, The Fox Spirit Steals Chickens and Having Eaten the Egg He Crushed the Shell as true events, the tellers vivid and lifelike and the listeners full of interest.
A Man Marries a Dog
A primitive-society dog-totem myth first discovered at Wujiagou.
Digging Through the Ridge
A Wujiagou legend conveying information about the worship of procreation.
The Wudang Mountain legend of Li Zicheng
A Wujiagou local legend unheard of outside the area.
The Qin Dynasty Scholar Died Today
A contemporary Wujiagou story of rich traditional colour.
Wujiagou Village Folk Stories
Two collections have been published, seven hundred and sixty thousand characters in all.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Wujiagou lies in the folds of the Wudang mountains and is relatively closed, so that there are many works of an original ecological kind, such as the legends of the Wudang mountains, the legend of Chen Shimei and legends about the local soil, all local products peculiar to the place.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Wujiagou stories are complete in kind and rich in content, divided into the six categories of myth, legend, story, fable, fairy tale and joke, and the first and second collections of Wujiagou Village Folk Stories, seven hundred and sixty thousand characters in all, have been published. The transmission of Wujiagou folk stories is as famous as that of Geng village in Hebei, and folk-literature circles praise them with the saying in the north Geng village, in the south Wujiagou village. This gives the transmission of these stories as a cultural form a certain popular character. Although the story-cultural space of Wujiagou has drawn wide social attention and some scholars' related research results have been published, as people's way of life changes and cultural life offers diverse choices the social environment for the survival of Wujiagou folk stories has been strongly shaken. How to maintain the orderly development of this excellent national cultural space is a question the transmitters and all quarters of society must consider.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Luo Chenggui 03-0781
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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