Historical Memory And Ethnic Identity

Yao is an old nation, and their ancestors build their own splendid national culture by their intelligence and wisdom in the long history. Yao's epic Panwang Chorus is one of the typical forms. Panwang Chorus is mainly spreading by the way of word-of-mouth in Hunan, North Guangdong, Guidong which are Yao gathering areas. It includes Yao's ancestor's view of nature,the theory of human's origin, the history of Yao's birth, marriage and migration. It covers literature, history, philosophy, ethnology and other subjects, which is the Yao's encyclopedia.Memory is the summary of the impressions and experiences and a collective social behavior. Each ethnic group has their own corresponding historical memory. Yao who has no letter, mainly memorizes their ethnic history by ethnic myths, legends, ritual. The process of historical memorizing is the one of structural or pedigree amnesia. What they memorize and forget is different according to the specific needs and different field in the ethnic group. Memory itself is not the goal but concentrating the members'emotion and identifying my group and rejecting others.The identifying of ethnic group has a variety of forms: the subjective one of emphasizing cultural emotion, the objective one of the cultural characteristics, and the border one of the main border structures. Each one depends on the ethnic culture. Panwang Chorus which memorizes the Yao's cultural main themes, such as the pan gu mythology, Legend of Pan Hu, Crossing Legend, Qianjiadong Legend, are not the true reality but the historical and essential truth. They are the symbolic sign of Yao's culture and metaphor the possibility of generating a variety of cultural significance which causes the potential of cultural illustrating. Those legends are just like Yao's spiritual bond. On the one hand, it connects all the branches of Yao in the worldwide into a n Yao common world. On the other hand, it connects my people with the mainstream group and with nation--national interests.In recent years, there are some unharmonious and unsteady elements in the northwest minority residential area. From the sociocultural aspects, it is a narrow racism ethnic identity, the "identity" of the unbalance. In the contrast of the Identity Consciousness of Panwang Chorus, it can eliminate the methodological implications bringing by those conflicts.