Historical Cultural Connotation Of Folk Songs In The Great Leap Forward Period In China

The folk song movement in the Great Leap Forward period of 1958 is not only aliterary movement and a trend of literary thought, but also a historical and culturalphenomenon. The historical cultural connotation it presents deserves even more ourspeculation and study. This thesis attempts, from historical cultural point of view, toprobe rationally into the folk songs in the Great Leap Forward period of 1958 whichwere overlooked by historians. The thesis is to use Chen Yin-que's method of"proving history by using poetry", through large numbers of folk songs in the GreatLeap Forward period to demonstrate internal historical logic of mass' discoursearising that this movement takes on as well as the historical cultural information suchas worship of the sun, view of people determining history and new socialism myth itcontains.The uplift of the mass' discourse in the folk songs in the Great Leap Forwardperiod has its internal historical logic. It not only shows the discourse exchange of thedecline of the noble culture and the growing up of the mass culture, but also resultsfrom Mao Zedong's thought of exploding superstition and exploring socialist road ofChina in the environment of international cold word. The folk songs in the Great LeapForward period directly derives from the movement of building irrigation works inlarge scale. A series of intellectual ideology reconstruction movement in the initialperiod of the new nation and the anti-right movement in the year of 1957 make theintellectual discourse decline and mass discourse powerful, which integrates theintellectual culture into the mass culture. Therefore, the spring up of the folk song inthe Great Leap Forward period is the result that official ideology completely controlsthe discourse right. Inspired by the spirit of exploding superstition as well as idea ofthinking, speaking and doing boldly, the folk song emerges from the prelude of theGreat Leap Forward in the winter of 1957 and spring of 1958 when the movement ofbringing all farmland under irrigation is on the upsurge.The folk song in the Great Leap Forward period is full of the imago of "sunworship". This imago takes root among traditional Chinese culture of farming, and itresults from the limitless worship of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party.The "sun worship" roughly experiences three stages: "natural spirit", "ethic-politicalspirit", "religious spirit". But because of the special historical and cultural stipulationsof arrangement, China' sun worship hasn't developed to the stage of religious sprit,thus takes on thick color of "political-ethic spirit". China's tradition of politicsshowing ethic feature and ethics showing political feature makes the worship of MaoZedong and Communist Party have an agency—relative ethic power.The folk song in the Great Leap Forward period demonstrates a contradictoryphenomenon: one the hand it shows intense worship of Mao Zedong;on the otherhand the mass' self-consciousness expands infinitely, and they exist side by side. Theinfinite expand of mass' self-consciousness shows at the explicit facet the mass'consciousness as a master, and also implies Mao Zedong's view of peopledetermining history. The two supplement each other. The view people creating historyimplies different facets: it refers both to the material practice facet and to spiritualpractice facet. The folk song in the Great Leap Forward period not only reappears thevigorous scene where the workers and peasants participate in the social materialpractice, but also puts up at the spiritual facet their attempt to create, participate andenter history, in order to set up the image as a master in the new era.The master consciousness that the mass discourse puts up to change the worldand create the new history inspires them to create "new socialism myth" with intenserevolutionary passion and spirits. Their creation of new socialism myth spreads at twofacets: the first is to deconstruct the traditional myth in order to respond to theideological demand of "exploding superstition";the second is to write socialism"world-creating myth", integrating mass' self-spiritualism and the leader's saintism.The personal worship and exaggeration in the folk song has done harm to oursociety. This thesis reverts the cultural spiritual information the folk song in the GreatLeap Forward period refracts to a series of historical facts, and discusses them. Buteach time when I feel the era that is full of craze and conjecture, I often immersemyself in puzzle: self-worship, view of people determining history, myth, etc., each ofthem has its historical inevitability, but the question is: can the historical inevitabilityequal to the inevitability in value concept. The thesis only offers a few commonplaceremarks by way of introduction so that colleagues in the historical fields may come upwith valuable opinions to explain its historical and cultural connotation in order tolearn a lesson from it.