Full Text Summary
The first chapter of the book introduces the "Di Opera" of the Anshun area in Guizhou and the Nuo Yuan Opera of Sichuan Province, helping readers understand the origin and development of Nuo culture. The second chapter traces the historical origins of Nuo culture, introducing the customs and traditions of the Han nationality, allowing readers to gain a deeper understanding of the connotations of Nuo culture. The third chapter describes the quasi-religious consciousness of Nuo and its community of gods and ghosts, letting readers understand the spiritual aspect of Nuo culture. The fourth chapter focuses on introducing the artistic forms of Nuo, including Nuo dance, Nuo drama, Nuo Masks, and other aspects, showcasing the diversity and charm of Nuo culture. The fifth chapter discusses the relationship between Nuo culture and social modernization, proposing suggestions for the protection and inheritance of Nuo culture.
Overall, this book is a very professional and detailed study of Nuo culture, suitable for readers interested in folk culture, history, and art. Through reading this book, readers can gain an in-depth understanding of the origin, development process, spiritual connotations, and artistic expressions of Nuo culture, while also learning how to protect and inherit this valuable national cultural heritage.
Due to my professional duties, I participated in the "Nuo Culture Research" theme and subsequent intellectual exchanges in the mid-1980s. Now, as an early reader of the book "Research on Chinese Nuo Culture", I would like to take this opportunity to share some thoughts inspired by it for discussion with colleagues.
The main purpose of "Research on Chinese Nuo Culture" is to explore the origins and development of Nuo culture, and to find ways to promote national culture and change customs, serving the construction of socialist material and spiritual civilizations. This is based on Nuo phenomena materials (mainly existing Nuo phenomena materials in the Guizhou region), using the theoretical tools of dialectical materialism and historical materialism. This is a meaningful and pioneering bold attempt. The publication of this book also demonstrates that the author's years of serious fieldwork and arduous desk research have been initially successful.
"Research on Chinese Nuo Culture" connects theory with practice, realistically demonstrating that Nuo is rooted in the shamanism of the primitive matriarchal era, evolved into court Nuo in slave society, and then with the development of productive forces, Nuo affairs as part of the social superstructure ideology gradually divided into two branches: court Nuo exclusively owned by the ruling class and rural Nuo used by the working masses. This academic monograph uses rich materials to conduct historical and realistic investigations, analyses, and comprehensive research on rural Nuo from multiple disciplines such as ethnology, folklore, folk literature, visual arts, music, dance, drama, as well as social, geographical, and historical perspectives. This shows that the author has invested a great deal of effort and space, striving to free Nuo culture research from the stereotypes of "pure academics" and "curiosity-seeking". It is precisely because the book follows the purpose of serving socialist modernization that it has been able to gradually deepen the understanding of the relationship between Nuo culture and modernization as the research work progresses, thus seeing the existing problems in the current theoretical research and practice of Nuo culture.
Since the beginning of humanity, there has been culture. People create culture, but in turn, culture shapes people. Thus, people's continuous absorption, research, and enrichment of the culture they live in is an essential part of creating new culture that further develops human society. Research on culture and cultural history can only start from reality, not from definitions or concepts. Researchers can determine their research objects and scope from different angles and aspects, without necessarily seeking uniformity.
It should be said that it was under the encouragement and guidance of the Chinese Communist Party's 11th Central Committee's Third Plenary Session's thought liberation and seeking truth from facts ideological line that Nuo culture research saw new developments. Following the 1981 Hunan Province Nuo Opera Symposium, the Guizhou Institute of Ethnology and Dejiang County Ethnic Affairs Commission, with the support of the Provincial Ethnic Affairs Commission, held the Guizhou Nuo Hall Opera Academic Symposium in late 1986. In 1988, with the support of the Guizhou Provincial Department of Culture, the National Nuo Opera Academic Symposium was held in Guiyang, and the Chinese Nuo Opera Research Association was established. Through these academic activities that had a national impact, Guizhou Nuo culture gradually became recognized by people from all walks of life. In recent years, the Anshun Di Opera has been invited to perform at the Paris French Art Festival and the Madrid Spanish Art Festival, and Nuo masks have been exhibited in West Germany. Guizhou Nuo has for the first time attracted the attention of Western European audiences, and some scholars from the United States, Japan, and European countries have successively visited Guizhou for investigation and written some papers.
In recent years, the Guizhou Provincial Department of Culture, Provincial Drama and Art Association, Guizhou Academy of Social Sciences Institute of Sociology, Guizhou Provincial Ethnic Affairs Commission, Guizhou Institute of Ethnology, and the Provincial History Office and its affiliated units, as well as people from all ethnic groups and all walks of life who are enthusiastic about Nuo culture, have respectively carried out work in various aspects such as investigation and research, collection of materials and cultural relics, sorting and publishing, and excavation research. They have gathered the largest Nuo culture research team in the country and achieved considerable results. Guizhou Nuo culture is a valuable heritage of Chinese national culture, and it can also be said to be a small treasure trove. In the past decade, we have begun to open the door to this treasure house, but entering the hall and exploring the treasures still awaits future days.
This treasure house of Nuo culture, with world cultural value and significance, is located in Guizhou. I believe that research on it should first grasp three basic points: first is ethnicity, second is the natural geographical environment, and third is socialist modernization construction. Guizhou Nuo culture should be a regional cultural concept, its geographical scope roughly includes the basins of the Wujiang, Hongshui River, Duliujiang, Yuanjiang, etc.; mountain ranges such as Fanjing Mountain, Dalou Mountain, Wumeng Mountain, Miaoling, etc., that is, southeastern Sichuan, western Hubei, western Hunan, northern Guangxi, northeastern Yunnan, and the entire territory of Guizhou Province. The geological feature of this region is a large contiguous karst area, which is rare on the world geological map. The numerous ethnic groups that have long lived in the karst ecological environment have preserved the ancient Nuo culture in the process of successive development, leaving behind this living fossil that can glimpse the trajectory of human social and cultural development. Like the rest of the country, Nuo culture research in Guizhou started and broke through from Nuo opera. Nuo opera research has driven and encouraged the enthusiasm for pioneering in-depth research in multiple disciplines such as ethnic cultural sociology, visual arts and aesthetics, and folk literature. Therefore, "Research on Chinese Nuo Culture" bears the mark of leaning towards Nuo opera, although it has in many aspects transcended the category of Nuo opera and expanded the research vision to a broader and deeper realm.
