Study of Festival Folklore in Ancient Poems in Chinese Textbooks for Senior Middle Schools: On the Festive Folklore Teaching Strategy for The Charm of A Maiden Singer

Abstract

As an intangible cultural heritage, festival folk customs are encountering internal and external troubles. Although it is faded by Chinese people in social life, it is eternally preserved in literary works. According to the new curriculum standard, “cultural inheritance and understanding” is one of the core literacy aspects of Chinese subjects in senior high schools. On this basis, this study probes into the strategy of using Chinese teaching to inherit the “intangible cultural heritage” of festival folk customs. First of all, the connotation of festival folklore should be clarified. Secondly, the content analysis can be used to explore the distribution of festival folk customs in ancient poems in the unified version of Chinese textbooks in senior high schools. Specifically, when it comes to the structure, festival folk customs are non-systematic with limited appearances in ancient poems. From the aspect of content, festival folk customs briefly introduce the festivals and their cultural connotations embodied in the textbooks but neglected by current society. As for the function, festival folk customs can be analyzed from three carriers such as time, folk and emotions for classification. Finally, taking The Charm of A Maiden Signer as an example, the feasible way of integrating festival folk customs into the teaching of ancient poems is proposed. Compared with the general teaching plan, such a design is original, which allows students to experience the national aesthetic tradition of “harmony between man and nature” during the Mid-Autumn Festival with the unique beauty endowed by Dongting Lake. Taking festivals and folk customs as a leadin of teaching can dig out the cultural connotation contained in ancient poems more deeply and accurately, so as to expand the profundity of teaching and improve students’ ability to appreciate ancient poems.