Folk Literati, Contested Tradition, and Heritage in Contemporary China

""[This book] provides a comprehensive, thoughtful look at the way in which a relatively small community has maintained and recreated and understood a set of local traditions and beliefs, and in particular the role of "folk literati" in this process. It offers a thorough analysis of the historical discourses and contemporary attitudes toward the practice of a local tradition that also has national (and perhaps international) import." — Michael Dylan Foster, editor of UNESCO on the Ground: Local Perspectives on Intangible Cultural Heritage"

""[This book] focuses on the repertoire and worshipping practices related to the ancient sagekings Yao and Shun as well as Ehuang and Nying, who are both Yao's daughters and Shun's wives... The author explores the ways different social actors have competed and negotiated with each other in the process of transmitting, reproducing, and representing local beliefs, legends, and historyZiying You show[s] how [eight scribes of these texts] have reconstructed, shifted, contested and negotiated local traditions in discourse and practice, and how the conflictive relationships among them have both shaped and reflected warring representations in the course of tradition revival." — Kristin Kuutma, editor of Burden of Remembering: Recollections and Representations of the 20th Century"

"Dr. Ziying You's book is one of the most important and far-reaching books of folklore scholarship today. The depth of her ethnographic interviews with folk literati, the local folklorists who document and shape cultural traditions, is matched by her insightful discussion of the larger questions she raises about the concepts of tradition and cultural heritage. Drawing on and engaging with decades of global legend scholarship, Dr. You's book is crucial reading for scholars of Chinese folklore, for scholars interested in how competing local legends are transformed and reconstructed over time and reflect social change, for oral historians documenting the intersections among legends and local histories, for public folklorists endeavoring to understand the role of culture brokers or others who document and shape traditional cultural practices, and for theorists interested in the understanding of tradition as a dynamic process."

~Amy Shuman, winner of the Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award, The American Folklore Society

"Ziying You explores a particular Chinese history to illuminate important general processes in the integration of nation-states and the construction of cultural heritage. Her "folk literati" are revealed as complex individuals whose role in sustaining local traditions in time of upheaval has gone largely unrecognized by scholars or policymakers. The account of Shanxi village adaptations to the cultural politics of Reform Era China and UNESCO conventions is conceptually sophisticated as well as ethnographically rich. Readers will welcome her excellent social history of Chinese idioms for intellectual activity and cultural continuity as she places them in dialogue with Western keywords."

~Dorothy Noyes, President, The American Folklore Society

"Drawing on intense fieldwork, author Ziying You offers new perspectives on the life of communities, families, individuals, and village temples in Hongtong, Shanxi province. Focusing on the roles of "folk literati" in the transmission of tradition, You examines how contested concepts of deeply rooted myths, legends, histories, and beliefs play out in the local social ecology over decades of modernization and socialist construction, most recently in the age of Intangible Cultural Heritage agendas. The contests over tradition center on annual ritual processions structured around the act of visiting the "sacred relatives," Ehuang and Nüying, daughters of the most ancient Emperor Yao, that are woven of multiple strands of folk activity. This ground-breaking study of folk literati, who record and document local culture outside the strictures of formal research or political agencies, has implications for recognizing the existence and value of local, grass roots intellectual agency elsewhere in China and the globe."

~Mark Bender, The Ohio State University

"By focusing on folk literati and cultural traditions in Hongtong, Ziying You engages with a cultural dialogue that spans the local and global, the East and the West, academic and folk, and the past and the present. It allows readers to obtain a deep understanding of the interplay of individual agency and social institutions in processing tradition and making heritage in China and beyond."

~Xiaohong Chen, Journal of Folklore Research

"The topic is highly sensitive to current efforts in reworking writings on historical developments in China. This review is important due to the fact that it allows many people to access details of the topic and to start a future discourse about some of the arising questions on heritage and historical values as well as about grassroot intellectuals and existing power structures."

~Corey Moore, Asian-European Music Research Journal

"This book is a deep field study of the transmission of local culture in Hongtong, Shanxi. Focusing on the worship of ancient sage kings Yao and Shun, the book extends outward, from the logic of ritual life in three villages, to the continuity and evolution of tradition within an 'ecology' of competing forces and manifestations, and the disruptions introduced by local media and the nomination of local rituals as Intangible Cultural Heritage. . . . With its high level of detail, applied with equal care to textual sources, theory, and fieldwork, You's work stands out in its field. Her sympathetic picture of China's folk literati represents a unique contribution to understanding the transmission and adaptation of local culture both past and present."

~Thomas David DuBois, The China Journal