(they Leather) "red" Section,

Ethnic cultures and characteristics are the basic elements of a nation's survival and development, the basic reflection of a nation's own values. Festivals, as a chief manifestation of a nation's culture and characteristics, are the enrich and essence of a nation's culture. Thus, the investigation of festivals can be seen as the research of the connotation and intension of its culture.Ge people, living in the remote areas of the southeast part of Guizhou province, China, are not really well-known to the outside world. Their ancestor worship festival, Hachong Festival, is also black strange to many people. As the unique festival, Hachong Festival is the mixture of material and spiritual cultures of Ge people, the obsession and life memory of psychology and spirit of their history. Hachong Festival and its contents were fully discussed in this dissertation with the corresponding ethnic theories. This present work intended to carry out a tentative investigation of the Hachong Festival and its internal importance, trying to demonstrate a panoramic view of a national festival and to highlight and interpret the features and meanings of Ge people's culture. Meanwhile, the present work also focused on the discussion of how to protect and develop the cultures of Ge people in today's world, considering the existing significance of culture to an ethnic group.The dissertation was divided into 6 chapters.In the introduction, the author discussed the major questions, significance, theoretical foundations, research status, ideas and methods, and sorted out the corresponding theories.In the first chapter, the natural environment, histories of the living areas of Ge people were introduced. Through discussing the interactive relationships between Ge people and the other nearby ethnic groups, the author gave a vivid version of mixture cultures of different peoples.In the second chapter, the author traced and described the history and distinctive cultural matters of Ge people, who are the actors of Hachong Festival, and also explored the ethnic identity issues under the national context. In the third and fourth chapters, the author gave a further interpretation of the cultural connotations and its social functions of Hachong Festival, by ways of participating the holiday, and knee to knee chatting with Ge people and comparing the two latest Hachong Festivals held before and after the liberation.With the reform and opening up to the outside world, the traditional cultures of Ge people to some extent are bearing a great challenge of modernization process; many cultural matters of the historical values have declined gradually. In the fifth and sixth chapters, the author discussed the pros and cons of applying for the Intangible Cultural Heritage in order to protect and inherit the features of Hachong Festival in the process of global modernization. After the introduction of the concept of "the invention of tradition", the author discussed the possibilities of new culture elements, in order to promote the development of tourism and to develop the cultures of Ge people.In the conclusion, the author explored the future development of the traditional cultures of Ge people, taking as an example the successful and fruitful protection of cultures of Amish people in the Sates.