A Study On The Legend Of Guiyuan Zen Temple In Hanyang

As an important part of Chinese folk literature,folklore is a precious cultural heritage created and inherited by the masses collectively.Because of its obvious regional characteristics,folklore can reflect the historical culture and spiritual world of the masses in a better way.The Guiyuan Zen Temple,located on Cuiwei Road in Hanyang,was built in the Qing Dynasty.It has a long history and still has a lot of incense even to this day.There are lots of tourists all year round and it has a great influence in Wuhan and even in Hubei Province.The legend of Guiyuan Zen Temple takes Guiyuan Zen Temple as the core of the legend.The folk oral narrative mainly spreading in Wuhan district is rich in content,covers a wide range,and has a lively plot,which is a rare and precious literary heritage.The thesis mainly takes the legend of Guiyuan Zen Temple in Wuhan as the object of investigation,combines the historical system with the regional system,comprehensively sorts out the overall form of the legend of Guiyuan Zen Temple in the long-term development,and explores its unique cultural value.The thesis is mainly divided into five parts.The first part mainly classifies and describes the legend of Guiyuan Zen Temple.According to the main tendency,it can be divided into five types:historical legend,character legend,scenery legend,custom legend,and spiritual legend.From these five categories,nine subcategories can be subdivided,presenting the overall characteristics and style of the legend of Guiyuan Zen Temple,which provides a substantial textual basis for the analysis of the legend of Guiyuan Zen Temple.The second part mainly discusses the background and contemporary variation of the legend of Guiyuan Zen Temple.Relying on the real historical events and the objective geographical features,the legend of Guiyuan Zen Temple has developed into the legendary story form we see today in the alternating process of reality and fiction through imagination processing.In the dimension of time,the legend of Guiyuan Zen Temple has changed in the course of history,which is caused by the change of context and the fluctuation of people’s emotion.The third part places the legend of Guiyuan Zen Temple in the social and historical background of Wuhan,and investigates the contradictions that Guiyuan Zen Temple,as a foreign religious organization,faces in the urban life,such as the state power,local power and folk power.The fourth part mainly elaborated the present situation of the legend of Guiyuan Zen Temple as the intangible cultural heritage through the field investigation.The neglect of the temple and the government makes the legend of Guiyuan Zen Temple facing a crisis.Although the legend has lost the original growth environment,but the core of the legend is still there,Guiyuan Zen Temple is still there,if the traditional thinking and protection methods can be changed in time,and the temple and the government can cooperate together,then the legend of Guiyuan Zen Temple will have a hope of development.The conclusion part summarizes all the arguments of this paper,reiterates the literary value and practical significance of the legend of Guiyuan Zen Temple,and explores the systems and methods that can be used for reference from the current achievements of intangible cultural heritage protection in China.