Local Emotion And National Responsibility—Study On Personal Life History Of The Chief Priest Of Er-xian Temple In Dong-nan Village

Since ancient times,the chief priest of a temple,a special group,has never been absent from folk beliefs.They are neither religious workers nor one who make a living on this work,but are ordinary people who live in temples,take charge of incense,safeguard the temple and keep it clean.They used to be called "temple keeper",“temple guardian” or "temple protector",which play an indispensable role in temples in Zezhou,Jingcheng,Shanxi.In the past,impeded by the traditional phenomena of the "customs" of folk customs,the life of priests is almost seldom entered in the vision of folklore studying,let alone their personal life history.What’s more,with the group expression of the concept of "folk",priests’ life is excluded from the writing of folklore ethnography.In this study,Yang liangen,an elder,a chief priest of Er-Xian Temple in Dong-nan village,is selected as the research and writing object to describe the reasons and draw a picture of real life during his three identity transformations--from a teacher to a village party branch secretary,and finally to a chief priest.Taking his life as a clue,this paper reveals the deep local emotion and national responsibility in the heart of a villager to find the greatness of a little man.While recording the life of an ordinary folk,it represents the history of a small village in Shanxi since the founding of the People’s Republic of China.Local emotion and national responsibility lied in Yang’s mind originate from his direct experience of personal life,which is bound to be rooted in local culture,country’s condition and historical background as a micro individual experience,is a product created by the interaction between individual,local communities and national situation.The writing of personal life history in folklore can pay attention to the subtle emotional connotation in personal life facts and the macro cultural situation of local villages and national society at the same time,which can promote closer integration of micro case analysis and macro social structure.This is the reason why this study chooses personal life history as a method and theory,and also a tentative effort to provide academic circles with the life writing of "folk".This paper records and analyzes Master Yang’s personal feelings and practices while fulfilling his responsibility,and reflects on how individuals treat,understand and continue their life in different situations of family,village and country,how to express their own emotions,and how to try their best to change the existing situation in order to achieve their self-responsibility.In the course of depicting master Yang’s specific life situation,this paper attempts to show how the local emotion and national responsibility are expressed and expounded practically,and how this two concepts which seem difficult to defined are understood and practiced in life.It is not only a tentative breakthrough in the research of the old concept of "folk" in folklore,but also intended to place the folk’s true feelings and inherent sense of responsibility in the cognitive center of folklore by writing the life of a lower social-class people,so as to make folklore to be close to the folk’s life world.