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Zhong Jingwen

Zhong Jingwen (Chinese: 钟敬文, March 20, 1903 – January 10, 2002) was a Chinese folklorist. Sometimes called the "father of Chinese folklore studies", Zhong pioneered folklore studies from the 1920s to 1980s. In 1927, he co-founded the Folklore Society of Sun Yat-sen University alongside a number of other prominent professors at the university. Several decades later, after academia and folkloristics were greatly disrupted by the Cultural Revolution, Zhong played a key role in the refoundation of folklore studies in China, serving as the first president of the China Folklore Society and the head of China's first folklore doctoral program during the early 1980s.

Zhong Jingwen
钟敬文
Zhong Jingwen and his wife, 1933
Born(1903-03-02)March 2, 1903
Haifeng County, Guangdong, China
DiedJanuary 10, 2002(2002-01-10) (aged 98)
Beijing, China
Academic work
Era1920s–1980s
DisciplineFolklorist
InstitutionsSun Yat-sen University, Beijing Normal University

Biography

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On March 20, 1903, Zhong Jingwen was born in Haifeng County, Guangdong.[1] Zhong was a major contributor to Folksong Weekly (歌謠週刊; Gēyáo Zhōukān), a prominent early folklore studies journal published at Peking University from 1922 to 1925.[2][3] In 1926, he began work and study at Lingnan University in Guangzhou. The following year, upon recommendation from Gu Jiegang, he became an assistant at Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU), also in Guangzhou.[1]

In November 1927, Zhong co-founded a weekly folklore journal titled Folk Literature and Arts (民間文藝; Mínjiān wényì) alongside Dong Zuobin, Yang Chengzhi, and He Sijing. Zhong was both the chief editor and major contributor to the journal; Dong, the other editor, returned to Nanyang to care for his sick mother in December, leaving Zhong as the sole editor. After twelve issues, the journal's sponsors discontinued it in 1928, seeing it as overly focused on literature and art at the expense of broader folklore studies.[4][5]

Later in November 1927, Zhong joined with other literature and history faculty (including Gu Jiegang, Dong Zuobin, and Rong Zhaozu) of SYSU to found the Folklore Society of SYSU, the first such folkloristics society in China.[4][6] In March 1928, the society began publication of a successor to Folk Literature and Arts entitled Folklore Weekly (民俗周刊; Mínsú zhōukān). Zhong served as chief editor, supervised by Gu and Rong. The journal became the primary publication of the Society, and moreover the most prominent periodical of the growing Folklore Movement, with 123 issues produced over its 1928–1933 publication run. However, Zhong's tenure as editor would prove short-lived; university president Dai Jitao fired Zhong in the summer of 1928 for publishing the Second Collection of Wu Songs, containing songs that Dai saw as glorifying superstition.[7]

Inspired by the efforts of the SYSU Society, other folklore societies were established at ten other Chinese universities.[4] From 1934 to 1936, Zhong served as a visiting professor at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan.[1]

In 1949, Zhong attended the First Congress of Literary and Art Workers in Beijing. Later that year, he accepted a professorship at Beijing Normal University by Li Jinxi. Concurrently, Zhong instructed at Peking University and Fu Jen Catholic University.[1] The incipient Communist government established the Research Society of Chinese Literature and Arts in February 1950 to organize folklore studies under Marxist principles. Zhong served as the first vice-chairman of the Research Society, with Guo Moruo as chairman. The following year, Zhong published an article titled "Understandings About Folk Literature and Arts", emphasizing the importance of folk literature and oral history towards understanding the history of the working class.[8]

The Cultural Revolution put a halt to nearly all higher education in mainland China. Folklore studies in particular took a heavy blow, as it was regarded as a continuation of feudal culture. Coinciding with the return of folklore classes at universities in 1978, Zhong drafted a petition to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to re-establish folklore study and research institutions. The petition was joined by six other folklorists, including his old colleagues Gu Jiegang, Yang Chengzhi, and Rong Zhaozu. This led to the foundation of the China Folklore Society in May 1983, with Zhong as its first president.[9][10][11] During the early 1980s, Zhong headed the folklore doctoral program at Beijing Normal University, which was the only such program in China for more than a decade.[12] Zhong's centrality to the establishment of folklore studies in China has led to him being known as the "father of Chinese folklore studies".[10]

Beginning in 1984, Zhong and Zhou Weizhi served as chief vice-editors of the Three Collections of Chinese Folk Literature project, headed by Zhou Yang.[13] Zhong began work on the six-volume History of Chinese Folklore, which was completed and published by his student Fang Xiao in 2008.[14] Zhong died in Beijing on January 10, 2002.[1]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e "钟敬文：毕生致力民俗学研究的国瑞文宗". Peking University. November 21, 2008. Retrieved July 25, 2024.
  2. ^ Hung 1985, pp. 49–53.
  3. ^ Gao 2019, p. 53.
  4. ^ a b c Liu 2022, pp. 164–165.
  5. ^ Gao 2019, pp. 100–103, 114.
  6. ^ Gao 2019, p. 103.
  7. ^ Gao 2019, pp. 108–116, 241.
  8. ^ Eminov 1975, p. 270.
  9. ^ An & Yang 2015, pp. 275–276.
  10. ^ a b Yue 2019, p. 28.
  11. ^ Zhang 2018, p. 8.
  12. ^ Zhang 2022, p. 129.
  13. ^ An & Yang 2015, p. 282.
  14. ^ Zhang 2018, p. 3.

Works cited

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