Original article published in Study on Natural and Cultural Heritage, Issue 1, 2024
Welcome to click here to subscribe
The Path to Exploring Rural Heritage in the New Era
——A Book Review of The Dynamism of Traditions: A Study of the Shifting Heritage Values in a Guizhou Ethnic Village
Sun Jing
(Quanzhou Cultural Heritage Research Institute, Quanzhou Normal University, Quanzhou Fujian 362000, China)
China's rural reconstruction movement began in the early 20th century. After a century of exploration by numerous scholars, various perspectives and propositions on rural construction have emerged. The countryside has become the spiritual "homeland" of Chinese modern academic inquiry. In 1989, Chen Zhihua, Lou Qingxi, and Li Qiuxiang formed the "Vernacular Architecture Research Group," initiating the study and conservation of vernacular architecture in China. The book The Dynamism of Traditions: A Study of the Shifting Heritage Values in a Guizhou Ethnic Village (hereinafter referred to as The Dynamism of Traditions) (Figure 1), authored by Dr. Li Guanghan, who studied at the University of Pennsylvania under Professor Frank Matero for her master's degree. She received formal academic training in historic building conservation early on, and later, under the supervision of Professor Sun Hua at the School of Archaeology and Museology, Peking University, she chose Dali Village in Rongjiang County, Qiandongnan, Guizhou Province, as her doctoral fieldwork site. Dr. Li conducted seven years of research and conservation work on "rural heritage" in this field site. Shifting from Western material cultural heritage conservation research to the study of living rural heritage in China, her decade of work can be seen as a new contribution by the younger generation of intellectuals to the century-long exploration of "rural reconstruction" by Chinese scholars.
Figure 1: Dr. Li Guanghan's new book, The Dynamism of Traditions: A Study of the Shifting Heritage Values in a Guizhou Ethnic Village
(Source: Photo by the author)
1. New Turn: From "Relics" to Villages
In the 1990s, Chen Zhihua borrowed the term "vernacular" (xiangtu) from Fei Xiaotong's From the Soil (Xiangtu Zhongguo), replacing "folk dwellings" (minju) with "vernacular architecture." He also introduced a sociological perspective, viewing vernacular architecture as a dynamic cultural process linked to vernacular life, "using genealogies, stele inscriptions, inscriptions, and interview materials to study the village layout under the influence of vernacular culture, architectural forms, and the functions and significance of various vernacular buildings in social activities."① This approach profoundly influenced subsequent generations engaged in rural heritage conservation, particularly a new generation of cultural heritage scholars represented by Li Guanghan. During her studies at Peking University, Dr. Li Guanghan frequently interacted, exchanged ideas, and collaborated with the academic team of Professor Wang Mingming from the Department of Sociology, which facilitated her exploratory efforts in her doctoral dissertation from the perspectives of "community" and "ethnographic methods." The Dynamism of Traditions can be regarded as the crystallization of Dr. Li Guanghan's seven years of fieldwork research and a significant marker of her transformation into a disciplinary intellectual.
First, in terms of research object, the book shifts focus from "relics" and "individual buildings" to villages or rural areas that encompass a rich and dynamic everyday life world. This means that the methodology of cultural heritage conservation moves from material preservation primarily based on engineering techniques to the study and conservation of "living" heritage that is everyday, integrated, and diverse. The Dynamism of Traditions particularly employs a historical process perspective to document the "local knowledge" of a Dong village in Guizhou. Placing heritage objects within rich socio-historical contexts and analyzing the origins and evolutionary paths of their current conditions amidst dynamic social and historical changes is both crucial and brilliant.
That is to say, the countryside is no longer viewed as a static object isolated from the state, without history. Like a diligent historical anthropologist, Dr. Li Guanghan, over seven years of work, gradually revealed the historical layering of Dali Village, a Dong ethnic village, "from Lidong to Dali." As a Dong village without a written tradition, the author first examines origin legends. Beyond ethnic origin legends, the most valuable "local knowledge" comes from the genealogical origin legend of the earliest "Neipai Yang lineage" – providing a historical example of the profound ethnic integration that occurred in the Qiandongnan region during the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties. Later, under the influence of the Qing dynasty's "Recreation of the Miao Frontier" (Miaojiang zaizao), the Qiandongnan region, now under imperial rule, underwent dramatic socio-cultural changes. Dali Village, swaying with the "grand history," gradually expanded its "small place" development space in terms of transportation networks, infrastructure, population size, and architectural styles. However, due to warlord and bandit turmoil during the Republican period, village shrinkage, and the decline of gentry families, Dali Village entered another historical phase. The research object we see today – the village – is itself the result of layered history. As Dr. Li Guanghan points out in the book, many historical remains within the village are evidence of this layered history.
In this sense, although Dr. Li Guanghan is not a local chronicles specialist, she fully respects the documents and materials of local historians. More valuably, the author effectively and vividly reads the "grand history" in the literature together with the "local knowledge" obtained through long-term fieldwork. Although sometimes such a mutual reading, due to the pursuit of rational narrative, results in the absence of local voices. Most anthropologists would criticize cultural heritage experts who favor rational narratives for blindly seeking or revealing a "truth" that does not exist in the countryside. But if we first set aside this debate, from the perspective of the methodological turn in cultural heritage, the research path of rural architectural heritage conservation that Dr. Li Guanghan inherited from Chen Zhihua and Sun Hua is quite clear and feasible.
2. Translator: A Bottom-Up Attempt at "Multiple Value Interpretations"
In terms of research theme, Dr. Li Guanghan, trained in cultural heritage, uses "heritage value" as her primary methodological tool. This value theory originates from heritage thought developed from architectural restoration and conservation practices represented by the Venice Charter, profoundly influencing heritage practices worldwide. "Value" not only runs through all aspects of heritage identification, conservation, and management but also centrally reflects and embodies the spirit of World Heritage. However, The Dynamism of Traditions does not simplistically or crudely seek to apply the "values" from international charters or conventions to rural China. Through long-term immersion in the daily life of Dali Village, the author experienced a world of everyday rural life. Consequently, she is committed to a bottom-up "interpretation of multiple value systems." If I may venture to summarize, her interpretation features three main characteristics: "from singular to multiple," "from static to dynamic," and "integrated conservation," with "integrated conservation" being the most prominent.
The author views "the heritage composition of Dali Village as an organic system of a community."② She divides the heritage composition of Dali Village into two major categories: the physical heritage objects and the heritage environment, encompassing both tangible and intangible elements of the village. She states: "The base of the system is the land, carrying people, objects, places, gods (non-humans), as well as the various connections and holistic relationships among them, constituting an order from the inside out."③ Borrowing Professor Sun Hua's research on the spatial division of traditional villages,④ Dr. Li Guanghan adopts the view of inner, middle, and outer circles, incorporating the natural world beyond the community into the organic system of heritage composition. She expands the natural foundation beyond the built environment: "An ideal Dong village should have its mountains, water, and fields each in their proper place... The landscape environment of Dali Village consists of its geographical carriers such as mountains and water bodies, as well as man-made production elements such as fields, forests, and land, supporting the inner circle structure of the village and forming an interactive network of social, production, and environmental factors."⑤
Particularly interesting, and noted by the author as a historic building conservation expert, is that "most villagers do not feel that the buildings in the village have special value, nor do they necessarily recognize the significance of their conservation. However, the good vegetation and abundance of trees are the most recognized characteristics of the village and are also the conservation objects that concern villagers the most." Here, the author pauses thoughtfully, leaving readers with a question to ponder: What exactly should be the object of conservation? When heritage experts and local people disagree on conservation priorities, how should one analyze and act? Is there a deeper wisdom of southwestern rural communities in the temporariness of Dong village dwellings versus the permanence of the natural environment?
Furthermore, within the inner circle, the community composed of people is divided by the author into public and private spaces, which she discusses separately. Public spaces are closely related to ethnic identity, such as drum towers, altars to the goddess Sa, wind-and-rain bridges, village gates, and stages – public buildings considered emblematic of Dong ethnicity. She selects these four typical Dong village public buildings and analyzes their different fates in the specific contexts of contemporary cultural heritage industry standards, ancient building restoration, or reconstruction. Regarding the wind-and-rain bridge, which has relatively low historical or aesthetic value, villagers showed the strongest agency during restoration precisely because it is embedded in the daily life world of the village – a hub for social interaction, a place for memory and emotional transmission. However, the drum tower, which has the most prominent ethnic characteristics and symbolic significance, is not a concern for villagers. The author suggests that its value as heritage "comes more from a stereotyped imagination. By constructing an idealized image of the drum tower for both villagers and outsiders, it completes the Dong village landscape and acquires an external significance for displaying Dong culture."⑥ Although the Sa altar and the drum tower face similar situations of rebuilding, "unlike the drum tower, which can be recreated in contemporary forms, villagers will not easily change the form, location, or surrounding environment of the Sa altar unless the village's social and ethnic structure undergoes fundamental change."⑦ That is, although the Sa altar is a relic, it still possesses "efficacy" (lingyan). Spiritual power (lingli) is taboo and awe-inspiring for villagers.
The author does not simply apply international standards of "heritage value" to the value identification of rural heritage. Instead, she carefully analyzes and explains the different situations of different historic buildings or material remains in specific socio-historical contexts: "Taking Dali Dong Village as an example, various spaces from private to public, including family houses, family burial groves, clan Sa altars, and the village's wind-and-rain bridges, have different levels of meaning and value for individuals, families, lineages, and all villagers."⑧ Chapter Four should be regarded as the most brilliant chapter of the book because the author achieves what she claims in the introduction: "hoping to explore, through case studies, the interpretation of a village value system based on local knowledge... Using the unique situation of heritage conservation practitioners being long-term in the field, as 'translators' between internal and external knowledge systems of heritage value, to find possibilities for collaboration and integration between the two knowledge systems."⑨ It is precisely in the academic positioning of "translator" that the author strives to achieve a bottom-up, rather than top-down, "interpretation of multiple value systems."
3. Epistemology: The Path of Rural Heritage in China
Another academic lineage that this book continues is worth noting: In the 1950s, sociologists, ethnologists, and historians conducted social and historical surveys in the southwestern region, with results published as the Series of Materials on the Social and Historical Surveys of China's Ethnic Minorities. About a decade ago, Dr. Li Guanghan's doctoral supervisor, Professor Sun Hua of Peking University's School of Archaeology and Museology, led and carried out surveys and conservation work on southwestern ethnic minority villages. Addressing the shortcomings of previous research on southwestern ethnic minorities, Professor Sun Hua believed that applying archaeological typological methods, "before formulating conservation plans for southwestern ethnic minority villages, it is necessary to conduct comprehensive surveys of villages in these areas and basically grasp the relevant information of existing villages. Only then can one compare the values of villages within an ethnic group or a natural geographical unit, select villages at different value levels, place them at different conservation tiers, and determine the scope of conservation, the取舍 of resources, and the direction of development."⑩ It can be affirmed that Dr. Li Guanghan's construction of the heritage system of Dali Village based on "heritage value" is quite consistent with Professor Sun Hua's original intention of applying archaeological typological methods, that is, "to determine the scope of conservation, the取舍 of resources, and the direction of development." This almost highlights the core mission of cultural heritage as a discipline, namely, to serve the cause of "conservation." The most important thing in conservation is to determine what is important, what is secondary, and what is unimportant. The priority order of conservation relies on expert groups providing complete, precise, and persuasive arguments. This returns to the discussion of "heritage" as a process of knowledge production. The value of Dr. Li Guanghan's doctoral dissertation lies in the fact that it fully reserves space for questioning (as mentioned above, the greater importance villagers place on forest protection compared to buildings, and the role of "translator"). She suspends doubts, neither arbitrarily intervenes nor blindly follows, and often frankly reveals her perplexities as an intellectual in the text. This is commendable in a field where heritage experts hold absolute discursive power. It is also in this sense that Dr. Li Guanghan's exploration and her research work are of considerable importance in the formation of disciplinary knowledge.
I worked alongside Dr. Li Guanghan in Dali Village during the summers of 2014 and 2015. Her perplexities about rural heritage often surprised me. Unlike the arrogance of industry experts that many anthropologists criticize, meddling in rural affairs, she often told me that she remained detached. Her claimed "detachment" differs from the "inconsistencies" of naive anthropologists presented in Malinowski's field diary from the Trobriand Islands. Through seven years of project practice exploring rural heritage, Dr. Li has herself become part of the socio-cultural change of Dali Village. Beyond architectural restoration and conservation projects, one of the most impressive initiatives to me was the "Dong Cloth Women's Cooperative," launched in 2015 in collaboration with Atlas. The women's cooperative has been operating successfully ever since, with more and more young women of the Dong generation returning to their southwestern homeland to become leaders of the cooperative.
In the 1930s, the British functionalist school pioneered a tradition of fieldwork and ethnography. This intellectual movement established the character and methodological foundations of anthropology. However, since the 1980s, a reflexive "subject-object" critique has led anthropologists to deeply self-criticize the romanticization of "others." Most anthropologists choose to maintain distance when dealing with "others" to ensure the "objectivity" of participant observation. However, the subject-object separation caused by ensuring this "objectivity" has led to ongoing debates about fieldwork ethics. Dr. Li Guanghan and her generation of young Chinese cultural heritage scholars, although often stating that they are detached from the rural world, are actually deeply engaged in complex rural practices, concretely facing problems and taking action. The process of practice is also a process of knowledge production.
Returning to the key phrase of the book, "the dynamism of traditions" – tradition is the result of history, yet it also grows and creates itself. So-called tradition is not a fixed, unchanging entity. In modern academic discourse, it is closer to the emotional semantics of "heritage," expressing modern people's nostalgia for the past. The true vitality demonstrated by this book lies precisely in the authentic impacts, collisions, and inquiries of intellectuals in rural practice. All restrained interventions, cautious collaborations, and continuous reflexive thinking constantly reflect the author's respect for the life world of Dali villagers. Interestingly, Dr. Li Guanghan is not keen on shaping her identity as a rural construction artist or social activist. Dali Village is not her "representative work" either. Within the rich academic atmosphere of Peking University's School of Archaeology and Museology, Dr. Li continues to seek paths to resolve her perplexities, searching for an appropriate disciplinary position within "cultural heritage" in the Chinese context. Her reflexive thinking on the path of knowledge production in rural heritage may well be one of the pathways to making interdisciplinary knowledge production possible. Therefore, this book is an indispensable work in the study of rural heritage in China.
Cultural heritage is a new interdisciplinary field, promoting the production of new knowledge and methodologies. New disciplines emerge from new socio-historical contexts, respond to new disciplinary questions, and form new disciplinary paths. The cultural heritage industry in China is undergoing a process of institutionalization, penetrating into every crevice of our contemporary life. Whether ethnologists studying southwest China or social anthropologists committed to community studies, Dr. Li Guanghan's dissertation is worth reading. As humanistic scholars, we participate in discussions, address challenges, cross the boundaries of disciplinary divisions, and confront the tension between concepts and reality. Even if we can only helplessly answer, "I don't know what to do either," it is not shameful. Responding to and thinking about the complexity of reality forces us to work together to get closer to the "truth," to the true "homeland" of Chinese modern academic inquiry.
① Li Jingjing. Research on Chen Zhihua's Thoughts on the Conservation of Cultural Relics and Buildings [J]. Journal of Architectural History, 2023, 4(2): 16-21.
② Li Guanghan. The Dynamism of Traditions: A Study of the Shifting Heritage Values in a Guizhou Ethnic Village [M]. Chengdu: Bashu Publishing House, 2021: 103.
③ Li Guanghan. The Dynamism of Traditions: A Study of the Shifting Heritage Values in a Guizhou Ethnic Village [M]. Chengdu: Bashu Publishing House, 2021: 103.
④ Sun Hua. Conservation Planning and Action for Traditional Villages: Part III of a Discussion on the Conservation and Utilization of Rural Cultural Landscapes in China [J]. China Cultural Heritage, 2015(6): 68-76.
⑤ Li Guanghan. The Dynamism of Traditions: A Study of the Shifting Heritage Values in a Guizhou Ethnic Village [M]. Chengdu: Bashu Publishing House, 2021: 130.
⑥ Li Guanghan. The Dynamism of Traditions: A Study of the Shifting Heritage Values in a Guizhou Ethnic Village [M]. Chengdu: Bashu Publishing House, 2021: 108.
⑦ Li Guanghan. The Dynamism of Traditions: A Study of the Shifting Heritage Values in a Guizhou Ethnic Village [M]. Chengdu: Bashu Publishing House, 2021: 112.
⑧ Li Guanghan. The Dynamism of Traditions: A Study of the Shifting Heritage Values in a Guizhou Ethnic Village [M]. Chengdu: Bashu Publishing House, 2021: 143.
⑨ Li Guanghan. The Dynamism of Traditions: A Study of the Shifting Heritage Values in a Guizhou Ethnic Village [M]. Chengdu: Bashu Publishing House, 2021: 21.
⑩ Li Guanghan. The Dynamism of Traditions: A Study of the Shifting Heritage Values in a Guizhou Ethnic Village [M]. Chengdu: Bashu Publishing House, 2021: 5.
About the author: SUN Jing (1989—), female, associate professor, PhD. Main research interests: cultural heritage, social anthropology, and academic history. E-mail: sunjing08cyu@126.com.
The Path to Exploring Rural Heritage
in the New Era
——A Book Review of
The Dynamism of Traditions:
A Study of the Shifting Heritage Values
in a Guizhou Ethnic Village
SUN Jing
（Quanzhou Cultural Heritage Research Institute，Quanzhou Normal University，Quanzhou Fujian 362000，China）
Scan QR code to follow us
Follow Study on Natural and Cultural Heritage
To obtain the full original article, please follow the "WeChat Journal" section on the homepage of this public account, or click the "Read More" link at the bottom of the article to access via CNKI.
Editors: Zhao Yahe, Lina, Ma Lerong
Reviewers: Li Guanghan, Wang Siyu, Yang Li, Sun Luqing
Final Review: Shen Ruiwen, Zhang Jianwei
