Study On The Culture Changes Of Folk Almanacs Since Modern Times

Folk Almanacs,commonly known as the Traditional Chinese Almanac or Tongsheng,is a folk encyclopedia guiding people’s lives.As a kind of common folklore datum,the traditional lunar calendar and much knowledge of divination in Folk Almanacs have been handed down to date with stability.At the same time,with the development of the times and the change of people’s life,the innovation of traditional knowledge and the embedding of modern knowledge constitute the variability of its development.On the basis of the previous scholars’ research on its stability,it is of innovative significance to discuss the "change" as the starting point,which tries to eliminate the prejudice of the Traditional Chinese Almanac.The material support of the article is mainly derived from the nearly one hundred Folk Almanacs collected in many ways.Under the guidance of text analysis and literature research,it classifies the contents of the folk Almanacs,carding the trace of the cultural changes of the Folk Almanacs,and finds the characteristics of the stability and variability of the cultural changes.Between the contradiction and unity of "changing" and "unchanging",the content of "change" in folk Almanacs is drawn forth.The four aspects of political knowledge,commercial advertisement,common sense of production and daily life are the main features of the cultural changes in the contents of Folk Almanacs since modern times.This paper discusses the background,performance and reasons of the changes in these four aspects,and probes into the relationship between the cultural changes of Folk Almanacs and the social change and the modernization of people’s life.In particular,the changes in political knowledge of the Folk Almanacs were influenced by the changes in the political system,ranging from feudal autocracy to democratic republic to proletarian democracy.It reflects the changes of people’s life in space,culture and pattern,as well as the politicization of people’s life.The vicissitude of commercial advertisement in the Folk Almanacs reflects the change from commodity economy to planned economy to market economy in modern times.The types of consumer goods and commercial customs of the people have changed,and the products of the public have become more and more commercialized.The common knowledge of production mainly includes common sense of soil fertilization,basic knowledge of pest and disease management,general knowledge of farmland farming.Changes mainly reflected in the application of chemical fertilizer,pesticide and agricultural machinery in people’s production.From unified agriculture to modern agriculture,the change of people’s mode of production brought about the decline of traditional production customs and the emergence of new production customs,which reflected the scientization of agricultural production.The common sense of life in the Folk Almanacs mainly includes the common sense of safety,hygiene and medical treatment.The changes are reflected in the safety of electricity,the spread and application of health care and western medicine therapy in people’s lives,and the modernization of people’s life.The significance of the cultural changes of Folk Almanacs is refined and sublimated from two aspects.On the one hand,the cultural changes of Folk Almanacs in modern times are the mirror images of social changes,and the changes of political and economic systems have led to changes in the current political knowledge and the contents of commercial advertisements in Folk Almanacs.The change of social production and life style leads to the change of common sense of production and life in Folk Almanacs,and these changes counteract people’s life at the same time.Therefore,on the other hand,there is a two-way interaction between the cultural changes of Folk Almanacs and the life of people.The changes of the contents of Folk Almanacs reflect the modernization of the people’s lives,while the modernization of people’s life promotes the continuous updating of the contents of the Folk Almanacs to satisfy the needs of people’s life.