A Study Of Rural Temple Fair Culture’s Remodeling Under Urbanization Context

The temple fair, one of the collective ritual activities, is more open and larger on scale compared to private religious activities. Therefore, they are more likely to provoke public attention. With the rise of the intangible cultural heritage protection, traditional folk culture has been steadily explored and conserved, and was incorporated into modernization combined with characteristics of contemporary social culture. However, the development of urbanization transforms how local people live, as well as accelerates cultural remodeling of temple fair activities. This paper, taking “Chong Wang Festival” temple fair at A-la Sub-district, Guandu District, Kunming as an example, studies the cultural re-shaping of rural temple fair under the background of urbanization.The Introduction reviews the literature on temple fair culture, and introduces the origin and significance of this study and applied theories. The concept of “culture remodeling” that is to be used is defined here from the perspective of folklore studiesChapter One presents the detailed information of the area where the temple fair is held, as well as an analysis of its cultural and historical condition, through which, the origin of “Chong Wang Festival” is claimed to be connected with Samei People’s agricultural civilization, unique cultural mentality and moral psychology.In Chapter Two, through the author’s observation and investigation of the temple fair in question in the context of urbanization and on the basis folklore records, it can be said that “Chong Wang Festival” temple fair, in the context of urbanization, generates the inter-construction among different culture systems and social levels, its religious functions compound and multiple, while the cultural patterns varying and ethical concept embodied in it weakening.Chapter Three analyses the reasons of cultural remodeling of “Chong Wang Festival” in terms of ecology, society and culture, along with the elements, characteristics and patterns of remodeling. In contemporary social context, that “Chong Wang Festival” temple fair goes on is not only due to its taking part in national cultural system construction, but also to its distinct culture stability. In terms of features and rules, religious culture develops when spirit’s invisible pattern transforms along with the process of the material world turning explicit. Therefore, “Chong Wang Festival” cultural remodeling goes through four phases: prediction, adjustment, remodeling and affective identification.In the last part, the Chapter Four, the author reveals the features of folk culture remodeling in contemporary social context. It comes to the conclusion that in this very context, as varied social roles participating, folk-culture remodeling exhibits distinct cultural manifestations and meanings, thus, different culture systems. The inter-construction between the folk and unban culture not merely enlarges the connotation and value of folk culture, but also diversifies its participants. And yet, modern society changes the rhythm people participant in folk culture, with the production and life no longer following traditional lunar calendar, which in turn leads to the change of natural and cultural rhythms. As a result, folk-culture is reshaping its own cultural rhythm and is forcing the public to shift from living culture time to cultural life time. Finally, the future developmental trend of the folk-culture and tradition is also predicted. The traditional folk culture is closely related to reality space, while the boom of cyberspace may offer the feasible conditions for the remodeling of folk culture and virtual reality.