Kneel for a preface about the folk photography exhibition.

Folklore scholars or folk culture circles in China have been using the concepts of folklore, folk culture, folk culture and national folk culture. Now an academic name of "intangible cultural heritage" has suddenly appeared, and this term has become very fashionable. Many universities and research institutions have changed their names, established intangible cultural heritage research institutes and intangible cultural heritage research centers, and some have proposed to establish intangible cultural heritage disciplines. In fact, in my opinion, this is a new style, a fashion label. As in previous years, anthropology has become hot, and many disciplines keep up with the situation, such as anthropology sociology, anthropology ethnology, anthropology folklore and so on. People cannot help asking, what are these subjects? Whether it is sociology, ethnology or folklore, is it necessary to join anthropology to strengthen its facade? In the final analysis, those of us who engage in these subjects have a little guilty conscience and lack confidence, and dare not admit that folklore or folk culture is an independent subject. Intangible cultural heritage actually refers to folk culture and folk culture that we used to be familiar with and study. The concepts of "intangible cultural heritage" and "folk custom" and "folk culture" can be replaced with each other. folk culture

Some people think that the concept of intangible cultural heritage is richer and broader than the concepts of folklore and folk culture. I don't think so. On the contrary, "folklore" and "folk culture" are more widely studied than intangible cultural heritage. A simple truth is that folklore studies not only intangible cultural heritage, but also material cultural heritage. Material folklore, social folklore and spiritual folklore are all the objects of folklore research. This view does not contradict the spirit of UNESCO's Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage and Declaration on Cultural Diversity. Folklore involves a lot of content, and its research field is still expanding until today. As far as the categories recognized by folklore scholars today are concerned, folklore includes the following major parts:

Folk custom of productive labor

Folk custom of daily life

Social organization folk custom

18 year old festival folk custom

Life etiquette

Entertainment folk custom

Folk concept

folklore