Why Shantou failed to protect most of the cultural heritage
In the final group assignment, we found that the situation of the old building might have something to do with its business condition. If Nansheng and Yongping could still run well nowadays, the two buildings are likely to be reserved. But this is one of the reasons only for the declining of business buildings. And it is rare for business to keep running for so long a history, which means in reality, it is hard to keep the old buildings by the running the business generation after generation. Especially when the people who run the business are not aware of the value of the cultural heritage, like the situation of Liangyou. Therefore, the main reasons might lie in the Shantou people’s awareness of the cultural heritage.
Education might be important to raise people’s awareness of protecting the cultural heritage, but the elder receive poor education while the young well educated prefer big cities. Without the idea to protect the cultural heritage, most of the elder even destroyed the old buildings causally. For the young generation, many of them move out of Shantou to seek for better opportunities. And Chaoshan culture is not that popular among the young people, such as Chaoshan Opera. Few of them would care about the hometown culture or would be willing to do something for it.
Besides, to protect the cultural heritage, it costs so much that few people can afford it without government’s support. As I mentioned before, the elder might not think highly of the cultural heritage. However, the rich that might be able to pay for the protection are usually among that generation. So they might be interested in investing the activities about worshiping the ancestors instead of for a museum. For the ordinary, they are struggling for their family and have extra energy for the reflection of cultural heritage. In my hometown, Xiadi(下底) village, Guangbu(关埠) town, Chaoyang(潮阳) district, there is a museum in memory of Huang Wuxian(黄武贤), a patriotic general in Qing Dynasty. The museum is also an old building of traditional and rare structure Si ma tuo che(驷马拖车). The museum is now managed by one of the descendants of Huang. But he can not afford to reserve it well and the whole building is somehow a desolation, while there are some rich people in the village but do not take action to help protect the heritage.
But I believe that situation well be better as more and more people talk about it and take action for it.
Indeed there are some people now working hard for it. Days ago, I was excited to meet a young man named Pan Yuechong(潘跃冲), who runs the Wechat Official Account“Looking Around Chaoshan”(寻遍潮汕). He works in Shenzhen and takes photography as his hobby. Whenever he comes back to Shantou, he would walk around and take pictures. Then he started shooting videos to show the Chaoshan culture and put them on the Official Account. The videos make a hit among the Chaoshan people, especially those who work outside Shantou. Another example is the photo exhibition at Shantou Library by Cai Haisong. As I know, Mr. Cai has been studying Chaoshan architecture and taking pictures of old building around Chaoshan area for more than 10 years. The pictures told the history of Shantou and lead people to make comparisons with the current situation. All above confirms that visual anthropology does play an important role in the process of protecting the cultural heritage. Besides, some teachers and students in Shantou University are also trying to do something. As one of the leaders of Xingchao Club(兴潮社) in STU, I have been working with our members on a project to protect the cultural heritage of the 700-year-old Xiadi village. And I got a lot of inspiration from the visual anthropology, which can make our project more professional.
The government is also taking action for cultural heritage protection. It will work physically. And to some extent it may draw people’s attention to the importance and the charm of cultural heritage, especially the young generation. Still more action should be taken to wildly spread the idea to protect these values. Furthermore, the young generation can combine professional knowledge with the new media to study and show the Chaoshan culture.
References:
4.(the documentary by Pan)
5.(the activities of Xingchao Club at Xiadi village)
