Written by | Zhao Meng Edited | Fu Ning
Yesterday, there was a news item that caught a lot of people's attention. In addition to the Inclusion of the Nanjing Massacre Archives declared by China, the Confucian Engraving and Printing Woodcuts declared by South Korea have also become "World Memory".
As soon as this news came out, many media published the article titled "South Korea successfully applied for the inscription of Confucian classics, containing a large number of Chinese classics". I have to sigh that the gap between China and South Korea is not only "football", but also the application for heritage.
What is the Memory of the World Register
Before discussing this topic with you, Zheng zhi (WeChat ID: upolitics) Xiaobian would like to introduce a background knowledge to you first. What is the Memory of the World Register that China and South Korea have successfully submitted?
It is understood that the Memory of the World Register, also known as the World Documentary Heritage or the Memory of the World Heritage, is a documentary archive protection project launched by UNESCO in 1992 after the "World Cultural Heritage" (tangible cultural heritage and intangible cultural heritage are both world cultural heritage) and "World Natural Heritage". The directory mainly contains manuscripts of world significance, precious archives and documents of various media preserved by libraries and archives. It is selected every two years, and each country cannot declare more than two projects. Together with the Nanjing Massacre Archives, 10 chinese documentary heritages have been inscribed on the Memory of the World Register, and the other 9 documents include the famous Compendium of Materia Medica and the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classics.
In 2005, South Korea's "Gangneung Dragon Boat Festival" was included in the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, and the "Gangneung Dragon Boat Festival" belongs to the category of "World Cultural Heritage". In other words, these acts are all "applications", but in different categories.
South Korea has bid for what China has done
Zheng zhi (WeChat ID: upolitics) Xiaobian found through combing that in the matter of "applying for heritage", Chinese and Korean netizens have "competed" more than once, initially "Dragon Boat Festival dispute", after which, South Korea's successful application for the ondol and kimchi have triggered heated discussions among netizens and media in both countries.
A careful calculation shows that a full decade has passed since the "Dragon Boat Festival dispute" between China and South Korea, and many Chinese people still hold the view that "the Dragon Boat Festival is Chinese, how can it be robbed by South Koreans". However, there are also views that this is actually a misunderstanding. The reason is that the project applied for by South Korea is not the Dragon Boat Festival, but the Gangneung Dragon Boat Festival, which means that on the day of the Dragon Boat Festival, a series of sacrifice activities are held in the Gangneung area of South Korea, including various witchcraft and sacrifice ceremonies, and traditional games and experience activities such as jumping rope and mask making, as well as masquerade dance and agricultural music performances. Although it was born out of China's Dragon Boat Festival, in fact, the project itself is a custom of South Korea itself.
Gangneung Dragon Boat Festival
Since then, in December 2013, South Korea's "kimchi culture" has been included in the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, which has made some compatriots have a little regret, thinking that kimchi is also invented by china.
In 2014, South Korea planned to apply for the "Ondol technology" as a representative work of intangible cultural heritage, and as soon as the news came out, it triggered a dispute between China and South Korea over the "application for heritage". However, whether South Korea's Ondol application was successful, Zheng knew (WeChat ID: upolitics) Xiaobian did not find the final answer in public information. It is understood that the scientific name of the heating facility that South Korea plans to declare is "Wentu", which is translated as "Ondol" when translated into Chinese. It is this translation that creates connections and misunderstandings. Wentu refers specifically to the geothermal heating system characteristic of North Korean houses. On the Korean Peninsula, which has been popular since the 7th century AD, is mainly a full-bed floor heating for the whole room, which is a setting that adapts to the "sitting" culture of local residents. There are not many Koreans who still maintain the habit of sitting low and sleeping. Some believe that the concept of "Ondol" that South Korea intends to apply for is not exactly the same as our Northeast Kang.
Ondol, South Korea
As for the "Confucian Engraving and Printing Woodcut Plate" declared by South Korea this time, it is mainly a woodcut plate for engraving and printing of a series of Confucian-related works during the Lee Dynasty (1392-1910) period of Korea. The media found that these ancient books included not only the works of Confucian scholars during the Lee dynasty in Korea, but also some original Chinese Confucian classics, such as Zhu Xi and Lü Zuqian's "Records of Recent Thoughts" (1794).
The logic of the Korean-style application for the heritage was originally like this
South Koreans have a long history of enthusiasm for heritage applications. Including the Jongmyo Festival, Pansori, Gangneung Dragon Boat Festival, Kimchi and Wintering Kimchi Culture, South Korea currently has at least 18 intangible cultural heritages, but the "application for heritage fever" has not diminished in the slightest.
However, South Korea's "legacy fever" is not considered to be the root of this problem. The analysis believes that Koreans often use the name of "localization development" of culture in such heritage application projects. For example, the Dragon Boat Festival, such as the "Confucian Engraving and Printing Woodcut" declared by South Korea this time. However, one or two projects are no problem, if there are more projects, a system is formed, and an image is established externally, it will be very problematic.
In fact, if you look deeply, China and South Korea do have many similarities, taking traditional festivals as an example, the Dragon Boat Festival, the Mid-Autumn Festival, and the Spring Festival are also the three traditional festivals in South Korea. Take the Spring Festival, for example, the Spring Festival in South Korea is called "Old Zheng", that is, the Lunar New Year. In Korea, "Kojjō" is the second largest festival in Korea after the Mid-Autumn Festival. But the traditional customs of the Korean Spring Festival are different from those in China. During the Spring Festival, the most important activity is to sacrifice ancestors. It is also this logic that when South Korea applied for the "Gangneung Dragon Boat Festival", it believed that the folk customs of washing hair with calamus water and eating burdock cakes were unique to their own country. This time, the reason given by the Korean side in the declaration process is that most of the woodcuts were carved in the Korean Peninsula, mainly in Gyeongsangbuk-do, South Korea. According to the analysis, judging from the Declaration Materials of the South Korean side, it is obvious that south Korea's application for the "Confucian Engraving and Printing Woodcut" focuses not on the technology of engraving and printing, but on the effective dissemination and inheritance of Confucian content and ideas through this skill. In this way, South Korea's application for heritage really seems to carry the logic of "localization development of culture" mentioned above.
So, how does the Chinese side view South Korea's application for "Chinese things"? When South Korea intended to apply for "Ondol" last year, the staff of the Department of Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Ministry of Culture told the media that China would not apply for the kang technology for intangible cultural heritage. Some experts analyzed at the time that the projects applying for intangible cultural heritage need to be valuable, positive and endangered and urgently need to be protected. There are many cultural heritage projects in China, and there are hundreds of national intangible cultural protection projects applied for by the Ministry of Culture every year. Therefore, there must be "priorities" in deciding which items apply for the World Intangible Cultural Heritage. However, many people in the industry also admit that South Korea's application for heritage reflects the Korean people's conscious inheritance of traditional culture, a sense of national identity, and the unique development and promotion of cultural industries.
If you jump out of the "application for heritage", from kimchi to Korean costumes to Korean dramas to "Uncle Bird Gangnam Style" as the representative of the Korean pop music once swept Asia and the world, these years South Korea's own cultural packaging and promotion is indeed unique.
Zheng knows (WeChat ID: upolitics) What the editor wants to say is that South Korea is also quite hard!