Connotation of ghost culture in Fengdu

In the history of human development, there are legends about ghosts wherever there are people. Taking historical legends and articles about ghosts as the media, making full use of ghost culture, developing tourism, and taking this as an opportunity to promote the all-round development of local economy, I am afraid that only ghost towns with abundant funds are left.

Fengdu is located in the lower reaches of Chongqing, near the Yangtze River172km, with an area of 290 1 km2 and a population of 780,000. It is a county under the jurisdiction of Chongqing. According to legend, Wang He and Yin Changsheng became immortals in the famous Fengdu Mountain in the Han Dynasty, and later generations mistakenly called this place "Yin Wang", that is, the place where Hades lived. Due to misinformation, the famous Fengdu Mountain became the legendary home after death, hence the name "Ghost Town". Li Bai, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, left a poem in Fengdu: "Laugh at the scholars on earth, and return to Fengdu in the north", making the name of Fengdu a ghost town spread far and wide. Many classic works such as The Journey to the West, Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio, Yue Biography, Fairy Biography, Yu Shiming's Talk, etc. They are all vividly rendered, making Fengdu more mysterious and grotesque. "Ghost Country Youdu" and "The underworld" are both famous for their popularity.

Although Fengdu is located by the river and has a valuable cultural heritage, it is listed as a "poverty-stricken county" because of its poor products and inconvenient transportation. The "small-scale" agricultural economy restricts social and economic development. 1986, the administrative department put forward the idea of "Fengdu Ghost Town Temple Fair", and based on the concept of "ghost", restored and developed a set of matching attractions of the underworld and paradise on earth, and vigorously developed tourism around the construction of these attractions, and put handicrafts, food, sculpture, architecture, knitting, ceramics, clothing, printing and dyeing, drama and other things with ghost cultural characteristics. The "ghost town temple fair" exploded like a hydrogen bomb, forming a shock wave with different opinions in Sichuan and even the whole country. Fengdu people insist on rejuvenating the county with ghosts, carrying forward the essence of ghost culture and eliminating the dregs of ghost culture, which greatly improves the popularity of Fengdu ghost city and attracts a large number of Chinese and foreign tourists. Prosperous tourism has become a powerful driving force for urban construction, and also promoted the development of economic and trade exchanges and transportation.

In recent ten years, Fengdu, a ghost town, has received more than ten thousand tourists from home and abroad 10, including more than ten thousand overseas tourists 10, with an annual comprehensive tourism income of more than 200 million yuan. It has become one of the top 100 tourist counties in China, and the county economy has also developed by leaps and bounds. Li Xueliang's photo report

Fengdu is the only place in China that calls itself a "ghost town". This is a miracle in a country that regards death as a great taboo.

Fengdu "ghost town" was once driven by the impulse of profit-seeking, taking ghost culture as a gimmick, highlighting the gloomy, cruel and bloody "underworld", and was finally criticized for being deeply immersed in feudal superstition. Nowadays, the first batch of key scenic spots in China are facing a crisis of survival.

In the crisis, Fengdu hopes to realize the rise of tourism by building antique towns. However, when "ghost towns" stop talking about ghosts and strip off ghost culture, it becomes difficult to live up to its name.

A traditional culture that has lasted for thousands of years will face a life-and-death choice.

A Millennium "Ghost Town" on the Decline

The just-concluded first China Three Gorges International Tourism Festival reported that Fengdu, a famous ancient town with a total investment of 500 million yuan, will soon be built in a "ghost town". This good news did not make Jiang Xiaochuan, deputy general manager of Fengdu Mingshan Tourism Group, too excited.

Standing at the door of the office of the famous mountain scenic spot in the ghost town, Jiang is not in a good mood to look around. At the entrance of the scenic spot, the ticket inspectors are chatting together, and the huge empty doorpost stands abruptly at the huge entrance.

Put your hands behind your back and pace back and forth several times. Jiang forced himself to sit back in his chair, wiped his face with his hands, and dug out the statistics of the number of tourists in recent years from the drawer. I couldn't read three lines, so he smashed it again.

2007: 520,000 tourists; 2008: 380,000 tourists; 2009: 430,000 tourists. Such a chart of the number of tourists made him unable to get angry.

1982 before "tourism" entered the homes of ordinary people, the "ghost town" scenic spot was approved by the State Council as the first batch of national key scenic spots. At that time, almost all the places listed in this list were cultural relics with a history of thousands of years.

In 200 1 year, tourism boom began to rise, and "ghost town" became the first batch of 4A-level tourist attractions in China. There are only three scenic spots in Chongqing that have won this honor.

In 2007, when tourist attractions are everywhere, "Ghost Town" has been the first batch of China folk cultural heritage tourism demonstration areas in China. This time, to beno. 1 only 15 scenic spots, and the selected places are holy places with national cultural symbols such as Mount Tai and Lushan Mountain.

The passing time is not far away. The Fengdu Ghost Town Scenic Area, which had been in the lead for some time, has been unable to keep up with the pace of domestic companions and even Chongqing's rising stars.

The glory of the past reflects the scarcity of today. From time to time, Jiang Xiaochuan recalled the grand occasion of the "ghost town" temple fair in the 1980s and 1990s. Now, he can only rely on the carved jade fence in front of the door.

Background of Ghost Town:

From Religious Holy Land to Chinese Civilization

For Fengdu, in China's religious history, cultural history, folk history and archaeological history, there is a shocking historical masterpiece hidden here.

Fengdu has always been known as "underworld" and "ghost country Kyoto". It is widely rumored among the people that Yin Changsheng, the alchemist of the Han Dynasty, and Wang cultivated immortals here, and later generations attached Yin and Wang as "Wang Yin", so Fengdu was misinformed as "Yindu".

The origin of this seemingly absurd name echoes the ancient literature of China. Both Liu Xiang's Fairy Biography in the Eastern Han Dynasty and Ge Hong's Fairy Biography in the Eastern Jin Dynasty recorded that Wang He and Yin Changsheng both released immortals in Pingdu Mountain in Fengdu during the day.

What interests textual research scholars is that these two legendary masters are not fictional figures, and they are quite famous in the history of China. One of them was Yin's great-grandfather, the queen of Han and Emperor, and the other was a doctor who was scattered in the middle of Han Dynasty. Even the idiom "vicissitudes of life" comes from this.

Since then, Taoism has set up Tianshi in this mountain, which is listed as "one of the 36 caves and 72 blessed places". In A.D. 198, Zhang Lu, the grandson of Zhang Daoling, the founder of Taoism, established the Taoist "Ping Du Zhi" in Fengdu and became the missionary center of Taoism.

Fengdu, as a religious shrine, has been pushed onto the historical stage.

The name of ghost town and the mysterious Pingdu Mountain attract scholars all over the world.

Famous heavyweights in China's cultural history, such as Su Shi, Du Guangting, Li Shangyin, Lu You and Pu Songling, all came here to travel and recite poems, leaving endless context here.

Pingdu Mountain, which has been infiltrated by Ci and Fu for a long time, was finally changed to a "famous mountain" because of Su Shi's poem "Pingdu is a famous mountain in the ancient world". Since then, Fengdu has become a famous historical and cultural city.

Fengdu, the capital of Bazi Biedu, has been built since the Zhou Dynasty. At the peak, there are 75 avenues, where thousands of statues, halls, pavilions and memorial archways of Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism are gathered.

This attracted believers from all over the world, as well as the traffickers and minions that followed.

1993 Old Town of Fengdu 148 Among the100000 cultural relics unearthed from ancient tombs, dozens of pottery figurines reflect the life and cultural scenes of that era, which strongly proves the diverse folk culture of Fengdu.

The mysterious cultural relic "Bird of Bayu", which once caused a sensation in China archaeology and was later designated as a symbol of Chongqing, is being unearthed in Yuanjiayan, Fengdu.

The exciting discovery continued with the wave of Luoyang shovel in the hands of archaeologists. Around 1995, many paleolithic sites were discovered in Gaojia Town and Yandunbao in Fengdu, which advanced the history of human activities in Fengdu and the Three Gorges area to more than100000 years.

Professor Wei Qi, then the captain of the Archaeological Team of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, wrote in the rescue report, "The site is a window to understand the cultural relics in the Three Gorges area and an irreplaceable important material for studying ancient culture in South China and even Southeast Asia."

In the end, the Yandunbao site was rated as "1996 Ten New Archaeological Discoveries in China". The understanding of the archaeological community is: this is "another 24-year history of China that can be compared with the Yellow River Basin in the Yangtze River Basin."

Fengdu bears the great Chinese civilization.

Alienated ghost culture under the impulse of profit-seeking

The exciting history can't resist the profit-seeking impulse of modern society, especially Fengdu, which has been immersed in the name of "ghost town" for thousands of years.

1988 April 18, the first "ghost town" temple fair was held, and the word ghost culture appeared in black and pink for the first time. In fact, this kind of temple fair existed in the Ming Dynasty. But at that time, it was just a voluntary pilgrimage by believers, demanding quiet and low-key, and even acquaintances in Lu Yu were not allowed to whisper.

The economic impulse brought by the reform and opening up has given the first "ghost town" temple fair more practical significance. The leading idea is "incense is the mainstay, and temple fairs are the media", and economic and trade negotiations and material exchanges have become the core of temple fairs.

However, one participant recalled that it was just "a farce". The whole scene feels like an "unprecedented ghost performance".

From 1988 to 2000, such temple fairs were held 12 times a year. Accompanied by it, in addition to noise, it is constant questioning.

At the same time, a new "ghost-making movement" to rebuild the "Ghost Palace" and "Yin Si Street" flourished. In the era of openness and tolerance, people no longer talk about ghosts.

During the Cultural Revolution, temples and statues in the "ghost town" with great aesthetic art and cultural and historical value were completely destroyed. The new "ghost-making movement", eager to turn ghosts and gods into gods of wealth, shows bloody scenes such as heart digging, laparotomy and frying pan in eighteen layers of hell one by one, and brings misery, gloom, cruelty and blood to the extreme.

This interpretation quickly attracted strong criticism from public opinion at that time, so that the secretary of Fengdu County Party Committee at that time had to come forward to defend that this was not a feudal superstition, but a ghost culture.

In 200 1 year, due to pressure, the "ghost town" temple fair was renamed as "China Hometown of Divine Comedy Folk Culture Festival and Ghost Town Temple Fair", which was held once every two years for 5438+00 June.

This move is intended to use the Italian poet Dante's Divine Comedy to compare Fengdu, replace ghost culture with folk culture, and weaken the "ghost town" temple fair. However, while preparing for this grand event of "combining Chinese and Western", Fengdu has an irresistible impulse to "do something big and get up quickly".

On 2001June 2 1 day, Fengdu spent more than 50 million yuan to build the "eighteen layers of hell", and was finally ordered to postpone the construction and go through the EIA procedures. After the news was disclosed, some commentators strongly criticized "Don't build a hell on earth". Six days later, CCTV's Focus Interview severely criticized Fengdu's "ghost town" for engaging in feudal superstition with the title of "ghost culture or trick".

Less than a week later, Fengdu announced that it would invest 230 million yuan to carry out brand-new planning and packaging for the "ghost town", build a "ghost town maze" to let tourists experience "torture in hell", enter the floating street to experience "reincarnation of life and death" and build the world's largest sitting statue of Yan Luowang.

The amazing investment at all costs has finally aroused great concern from public opinion.

In August 2008, Fengdu announced a project with a total investment of 700 million yuan to build a ghost country Kyoto theme park. Xinhua News Agency took the lead in disclosing this matter and linked it to Fengdu's status as a national poverty-stricken county. The media lashed out at Fengdu for worshipping ghosts and gods and ignoring people's livelihood. This incident once alarmed the central authorities.

On September 1 1 that year, the Chongqing Municipal Government held a press conference to clarify that this project was an enterprise behavior, in which infrastructure construction such as the management of the water level fluctuation zone in the scenic spot accounted for 90.77% of the total investment, and scenic spot renovation only accounted for 9.23%.

Although the situation finally subsided, Fengdu's ghost culture trip seems to have reached a dead end.

The Destruction of the Name of "Ghost Town"

In the following two years, the scene of the windy "ghost town" in full swing almost disappeared. A cold winter is coming.

"Looking for CCTV advertisements three times, I was rejected three times. I really met a ghost as soon as I heard about the ghost town. " As the propaganda chief of Fengdu County Tourism Bureau, Li Tingfu once felt that he should take the blame and resign.

What makes Li feel "blamed" is far more than CCTV's plague-like ban. The outdoor billboards of "Ghost Town", which used to be all over the streets of Chongqing, are almost gone now, replaced by new attractions such as Xueyudong.

In order to break the marketing dilemma, the word "ghost town" is replaced by a more hidden "famous mountain scenic spot" to avoid the sensitive "feudal superstition" to stimulate the outside world.

In the depressed atmosphere, Fengdu's emotional identification with ghost culture has also undergone a subtle change. When talking about the ghost culture in Fengdu, a member of the Standing Committee of Fengdu County Committee said three words: "I don't understand ghost culture. A culture that does not believe in ghosts. Do not talk about ghost culture. "

Faced with this situation, Fan Mingji, an old man who has studied ghost culture for more than half a century, is saddened: "Get quick success and instant benefit, and ruin a cultural treasure!" Fan Mingji, 72, is the secretary-general of the Ghost Town Cultural Research Association and the Ghost Town Folk Culture Research Association.

"For the sake of economic interests, I don't respect history, I only know how to make things up." If the planning control is not good, the Jade Emperor, which has nothing to do with Fengdu, can also be built in a "ghost town"; Tour guides only care about making up stories so that tourists can burn incense and worship Buddha for profit. He said he watched the ghost culture being destroyed step by step.

A satire that can be proved can be seen from the heyday of the fabrication of Ghost Town. The famous mountain in "Ghost Town" claims that "Laugh at the scholars in the world and sink the soul in the north" is a poem written by poet Li Bai after visiting the famous mountain. It is not only widely publicized, but also gilded on both sides of the archway at the entrance of the famous mountain.

However, in 1993, when Liang Congjie, a member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, visited a famous mountain, he found that Li Bai's poems had been tampered with. The original sentence is "Laugh at the scholars in the world and sink the soul in the north." "Luo Yong" is the underworld in Taoist mythology, which is not true. Moreover, Li Bai has never been to Fengdu or written poems for Fengdu. Even Fengdu in the Tang Dynasty was changed to Du Feng in the Ming Dynasty.

Soon, Liang wrote this case-solving into a critical article "Talking about Ghost Town", which was published in Oriental and Sichuan Literature and History Materials.

However, when Liang Congjie visited the famous mountain again on 200 1, he found that the couplets were still there, but the original words such as "Li Bai's poems" were removed and became an "unknown couplet".

On a whim, he mentioned it again in the article "Look at the Water of the Three Gorges" in the ninth edition of People's Daily on October 22, that year, and joked: "I think this is a little progress than pulling Li Da's poets into the fake gang!"

Fan Mingji also cited an example of a ghost town neglecting cultural excavation: "Visitors to the ghost town may have heard of Yin and Wang, but who knows that there are real people in history?"

"The tour guide doesn't know! This is the shame of the scenic spot and the sorrow of the ghost town culture. " The old man said angrily that if he didn't learn culture, he wanted to eat by culture, which was his own job.

Fan Mingji became a prophecy in one sentence. In 2008, the number of famous mountain tourists dropped to 380,000, almost the lowest in history.

Ghost culture is drifting away.

Anger is anger. This stubborn old man has been studying ghost culture from folklore and temples since 1958, and is still going all out to clear the name of ghost culture. He wrote a large number of analytical articles, such as "Distinguishing the Truth from the False, Grasping the Essence, and Making the Ghost Town Culture Brilliant", in an attempt to thoroughly clarify the ghost culture and feudal superstition that integrate Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism.

At the same time, in 2009, the Propaganda Department of Fengdu County Committee organized a large number of experts and scholars to collect and sort out a large number of documents, and launched the CD of Image Fengdu, Charming Fengdu Album and Mysterious Fengdu Allusions.

In these beautifully bound publicity materials, all gloomy, bloody and fabricated horror stories have been eliminated, replaced by well-documented, thought-provoking, beautiful and meaningful traditional allusions such as "Tang Wang Tianshou" and "Dongpo's visit to deer", emphasizing the educational function of ghost culture of "punishing evil and promoting goodness, showing harmony only" and completely eliminating the original works.

However, when people and officials are tacitly looking for a way out for the ghost culture that lasts for thousands of years, a news broke this tacit understanding in June+10 this year. According to the news, the "ghost town" scenic spot will invest 500 million yuan to build more than 400 acres of antique towns with Ming and Qing styles.

Xiong, deputy director of the Tourism Development Management Committee of Fengdu County, confirmed that the "ghost town" scenic spot really needs to build "the largest antique city along the Yangtze River". The specific plan is to introduce the ancient 72 Guild Hall and the folk culture of East Sichuan, and establish an "ancient town with traditional memory documents".

Xiong did not give a positive answer to the question whether the "ghost town" scenic spot would give up ghost culture, saying that the ghost town was built by Jiaolv Group in 2007. However, he said that the future development direction of "ghost town" is "leisure vacation" because this is an international trend. To this end, it will invest 6,543,800 yuan to build a tourist reception center.

As the actual operator of the "ghost town" scenic spot, Jiang Zongjin, director of the management department of Chongqing Jiaolv Group, said frankly that the ghost town is an absolute high-quality resource simply from the perspective of uniqueness, exclusivity, monopoly and irreplaceability of tourism products.

However, due to ideological taboos, ghost culture is now a "high-voltage line". He said helplessly that in daily work, the word "ghost town" has disappeared from documents and speeches. In terms of publicity and marketing, the group is also at a loss.

Based on this, the group had to find another way, hoping to promote the "ghost town" scenic spot that has fallen sharply by building antique towns in Ming and Qing Dynasties. Jiang Zongjin admits that in the foreseeable future, even if the "ghost town" is promoted and marketed in the future, it is necessary to grasp the "degree".

"Ghost culture is hard to become the protagonist of Fengdu again." Jiang Xiaochuan, who used to be the director of the office of Fengdu Tourism Bureau, was very lonely.

New City and Historical Hope

"The ghost town scenic spot didn't find its unique resource advantages at first, so that it followed the trend step by step and lost its own characteristics." As a tourism practitioner, Ling Jian lamented the experience of "ghost town" for thousands of years.

Ling Jian, a Singaporean Chinese, has long been engaged in the strategic planning and design of tourism at home and abroad, and is good at the planning and design of cultural and ecological tourist areas.

From 65438 to 0997, Ling Jian went to the "ghost town" in Fengdu. I thought I could see the rare spectacle of China's great integration of Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism, but he was disappointed by the horror deliberately created by the acousto-optic equipment on the surface of the scenic spot.

Later, he simply visited the scattered cultural relics in the workshop alone. As a result, he found that almost every household in the local area kept New Year pictures, musical instruments and books related to ghost culture.

"Why not collect these objects with strong cultural and historical symbols from the people and gather them into a ghost culture museum or exhibition center?" Ling Jian said that if there is such a place, it will definitely attract the vast majority of China people to visit it.

Pu Yongjian, deputy director of the Development Research Center of Chongqing University, agreed with Ling Jian. In his view, the ghost culture in Fengdu is not a general superstition, but a traditional culture in China. It is a regional culture that took thousands of years to form, and all the cultural sources are very clear, not suddenly appearing.

On the contrary, it is very dangerous for Fengdu's "ghost town" to change course and build an antique town.

He believes that no matter the natural ancient towns with a long history all over the country, they have become massive. As far as Chongqing is concerned, almost all 40 districts and counties have ancient towns, and some have more than one.

Fengdu blindly invested huge sums of money to build a specious antique town, which is difficult to attract tourists with increasingly high aesthetic vision. In addition, the current tourism pattern of Fengdu is a transit tour rather than a destination tour, which makes the future of this leisure tourist area full of uncertainty.

"Fengdu should revitalize tourism and take ghost culture as the theme. It is impossible to surpass cultural symbols with thousands of years of history by artificially piling things up. " Fan Mingji, an old man, stood by the new city river and looked at the ghost town on the other side of the river. His expression was stubborn and complicated.

In the afterglow of the sunset, Fengdu New Town and the famous "ghost town" seem to be close at hand, but they are ruthlessly separated by the raging river and can only look at each other silently.