Ancestral Legends And The Construction Of Historical Memory

With the revival of the traditional culture, the local people begin to promoting and protecting native cultures, in order to establish a cohesive community, which owns an unique orthodox status and get social recognition. At the same time, they build up their own cultural confidence by preserving the feature of their cultures as a resource and gain the right of saying. So, folk custom and culture in the whole country, for example, folk opera, mythos, legends and folk songs, and so on, come back to people's daily life. While, how do the people construct historical memory as a new culture resource back to people's daily life? For solving the question, I choice to study the Bingong Legend that it spreads at Pingle, Guangxi Province. My study has three main aims. First, I analyze the Bingong Legend and know its cultural connotation. Second, I want to take on memory mechanisms which have been contained by the Bingong Legend. Third, I would like to delve how the historical memory has been constructed and the link between the historical document and the legend.My paper consists of five parts. The introduction part chiefly explains the origin of choosing the topic and the purpose and significance of the study. Besides, it combs the present research situation. The second part is to instruct the history and geographical environment of Pingle and Le Shanli that is the place for Bin Family to live. The third part, I want to take on the Bingong Legend and analyze its cultural connotation. The forth part, I would like to take on memory mechanisms which have been contained by the Bingong Legend, as the static memory and the dynamic memory, and find out the reason how they exist without by written. The last part, my goal is to delve how the historical memory has been constructed and the link between the historical document and the legend. The main aim of the thesis is to explain the reason why the historical memory been constructed, and how the local people build up their own cultural confidence and Cultural Identity.From my case study, I discover the local people memorize the history disordered and unsound, not clear or fresh. Basing on it, people can absorb other historical knowledge, and their memories have been constructed from time to time. So, for local peoples, it is more significant than the truth history.My title is of 'Ancestral Legends and the Construction of Historical Memory', which is to explain the reason of the folk literature why it is changing from time to time, and to delve how the local people exhibit their historical memories.