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the research center for the protection and development of traditional chinese villages of tianjin university was established based on the feng jicai institute of literature and art of tianjin university. as a professional academic institution for research on the protection of traditional villages, it aims to promote and implement the protection and development of traditional villages through theoretical construction and practical research. .

pu jiao, a professor at tianjin university, has been focusing on related research on intangible cultural heritage projects such as woodblock new year pictures and tianjin imperial society since 2007. after the establishment of the research center for the protection and development of traditional chinese villages at tianjin university in june 2013, she served as deputy director of the center. . the following is an exclusive interview with pu jiao.

pu jiao. picture/provided by interviewee

“traditional villages contain too much information”

"china news weekly": please briefly introduce the research center for the protection and development of traditional chinese villages at tianjin university.

pujiao:from 2000 to 2010, 900,000 traditional villages disappeared in ten years. mr. feng jicai keenly discovered this phenomenon. subsequently, the ministry of housing and urban-rural development took the lead, jointly with the ministry of culture, the state administration of cultural heritage, and the ministry of finance to organize a survey of traditional villages, and in december 2012, the first batch of chinese traditional villages was selected. against this background, with the approval of the chinese folk literature and artists association and tianjin university, the research center for the protection and development of traditional chinese villages of tianjin university was officially established on june 4, 2013. mr. feng jicai serves as the director of the center. after the establishment of the center, a group of domestic and foreign experts who have made great achievements in traditional villages, such as ruan yisan, chen zhihua, lou qingxi, song zhaolin, etc. were hired to form an academic committee. prior to this, there were few independent research institutions on traditional villages, so the establishment of the center actually came into public view as a multi-field collaborative research in an interdisciplinary background.

the staff of our center are also teachers of tianjin university. therefore, over the years, we have also integrated the protection of traditional villages into the training of graduate students.

"china news weekly": is there still no specialized research or even discipline on traditional villages? has the relevant theoretical system been established?

pujiao:at present, i think it seems immature to treat traditional village studies as an independent subject. at present, there is some controversy in the academic circles, including the establishment of intangible cultural heritage. however, as an international academic concept, the classification boundaries between intangible cultural heritage and folklore and anthropology are still clear. at present, it seems difficult for traditional villages to get the public to immediately recognize a classification from any discipline. as for its research, various disciplines have made efforts and can find an angle from which to approach it. therefore, it seems that it is not rigorous enough to belong to the current disciplines or to be classified as an interdisciplinary discipline. perhaps the biggest problem is that traditional villages contain too much information, and as a cultural space in which ordinary people live, they are changing every moment. it seems that the speed of our research is always catching up with the speed of its change.

“not only should we stand today and look at the past,

we still have to stand in the present and look at the future.”

"china news weekly": how to understand the protection of traditional villages?

pujiao:traditional villages were first commonly called ancient villages, and now many people are still accustomed to calling them ancient villages or traditional ancient villages. in september 2012, at the first meeting of the expert committee for the protection and development of traditional villages, at the suggestion of mr. feng jicai and other experts, the customary name "ancient village" was changed to "traditional village". this is actually considered from the perspective of the value of traditional villages. "ancient" is just a dimension of time. ancient does not mean excellence, but "traditional" contains richer content, that is, it can better express recognition of value.

director dong hongmei, director of the assistance office of the ministry of housing and urban-rural development and first-level inspector of the village and town construction department, often mentioned a saying - traditional villages should "see things, people, and life" and "five thousand years on the outside, five-star on the inside." as a unit of production and life, traditional villages are not only the carrier of china’s excellent farming culture, but also the cradle of china’s excellent traditional culture. therefore, for its protection, in addition to preserving cultural genes, it is more important to create better living conditions and development opportunities for the people. only by retaining people can the village be preserved. if the village is only an empty shell with no one living in it, then the ones with better facilities will be thousands of b&bs, and the ones with poor conditions will be abandoned homes. this is completely contrary to the original intention of protection. going in the opposite direction.

"china news weekly": but everyone yearns for a better life, and people in traditional villages also hope to enjoy modern life. if protecting traditional villages requires retaining people, how to resolve the contradiction between them?

pujiao:first of all, we need to think about what the village can give people? what can people give back to the village? this may not be a unilateral relationship of output or nurturing and taking, but requires constant feedback from both parties. traditional villages are carriers that carry history and the present. history is superimposed, so many cultures are in dialogue within it. well, with the development of time, traditional ways of thinking, life patterns, and even means of making a living are no longer suitable for modern life, so change is inevitable. at the same time, we must look at the present from a development perspective. the most basic thing is to solve the problems of people's clothing, food, housing and transportation. one is a problem of survival, and the other is a problem of development. they have been the problems that people have been pursuing since ancient times.

the overall style, including the relationship between buildings, buildings and nature, and local regulations, is very important. for example, if a place is not rich in a certain kind of soil, it would definitely be uncoordinated if you use soil from other places to build a house. for another example, in some places, residential buildings cannot be higher than public buildings. it is not appropriate to build several floors next to a temple.

if these can be followed, some debugging can be done appropriately. a traditional village should be a superposition of the old and the new, and it must be changing slowly. nothing has not changed from history to the present. mr. feng jicai once said that we should not only look at the past from today, but also look at the future from the present. the outside world has changed, and it is impossible for traditional villages to stick to their original way of life.

"think more and don't rush"

"china news weekly": in the past ten years since traditional villages have been valued, there will definitely be many achievements. but are there any new changes or new problems?

pujiao:as mentioned just now, it is a big problem to overly regard tourism as the only development outlet for villages. it is an even bigger problem to not be able to find the way out after over-tourism. tourism can be one of the ways to develop traditional villages, but over-development in the pursuit of quick success is also a kind of destruction. traditional villages are a non-renewable resource, and any development without a scientific plan will cause irreversible consequences. therefore, mr. feng jicai will remind him every time he visits a village to investigate, "think more, don't be anxious, think carefully before taking action."

"china news weekly": as of 2023, a total of 8,155 chinese traditional villages have been selected. but in fact, if you look closely, you will find that starting from the fourth batch, each selection time gradually becomes longer, and the number of selected villages in the first five batches has been increasing, while the number of selected villages in the sixth batch is only about half of the fifth batch. so will we continue to select the seventh and eighth batches of lists?

pujiao:slowing down the judging process is certainly not a bad thing. china has experienced rapid social transformation, and our views on culture and villages are constantly adjusting. the first few criticisms about the quick selection and large number are because we are racing against time and need to quickly rescue some valuable villages and form a certain influence in society to make everyone quickly realize the value of traditional villages. but we may need to gradually slow down, think more, and be more cautious about the situations we are still facing and the unresolved problems ahead. in short, i think that on the one hand, we need to carry out a "refined" operation, that is, the selection is more detailed and the threshold is higher; on the other hand, we need to enter a "cooling off period" treatment, which means to consider the future development of the villages selected for the list. and protected mode exploration.

of course, we also need to consider another issue, which is that once a village is selected into the list, it means that it will be subject to more restrictions and will not be able to develop it in a drastic way. therefore, a small number of people left the village because they were unable to meet their demands for personal transformation and development. in short, china's rural issues are too complex. they are related to history, connected to modern times, closely related to people's livelihood and livelihood, and have a lot to do with the improvement of the rural governance system.

"china news weekly": as a scholar and practitioner who has long paid attention to traditional villages, what is the ideal situation for the protection and development of traditional villages in your mind?

pujiao:the first is that villagers can earn a living and meet their development needs; the second is that the living environment and facilities are complete, and education, medical care, and elderly care are complete; and the last is that local culture can be inherited spontaneously and a sense of pride and satisfaction can be gained from it. in short, the gap between urban and rural areas should be eliminated to the greatest extent and the general requirements of prosperous industry, livable ecology, civilized rural customs, effective governance, and prosperous life should be achieved. the protection of traditional villages has been elevated to a national strategy under the national system, which reflects the country's thinking on the relationship between urban and rural areas and its emphasis on traditional culture.

published in the 1158th issue of "china news weekly" magazine on september 30, 2024

magazine title: traditional villages are carriers of history and present

——exclusive interview with pu jiao, deputy director of the chinese traditional village protection and development research center

reporter: xu pengyuan