A new edition of the SMLLC Research Seminar was held online on Wednesday 23 March. Professor Lihui Yang from the School of Chinese Language and Literature at Beijing Normal University presented her research on Mythologism in the Context of Heritage Tourism: An Ethnographic Study of Tour Guides’ Myth-telling Performance in Northern China. Around 20 colleagues and students from the SMLLC attended the seminar and had a great discussion with Prof. Yang around mythology, folklore and turism.
Mythologism in the Context of Heritage Tourism: An Ethnographic Study of Tour Guides’ Myth-telling Performance in Northern China
"Mythologism" refers to the reconstruction of myths due to the influence of modern cultural industry and electronic media since the second half of the twentieth century, when myths are taken out of the everyday life of communities and replanted in new contexts, shown to different people, and endowed with new functions and meanings. Based on a long-term fieldwork and taking re-telling the myths of the Great Goddess Nüwa by tour guides at the Wahuang Temple in Hebei Province in north China as the case, this presentation analyzes the re-telling performances of individual guides and explores the features of mythologism embodied in the context of heritage tourism.
Dr. YANG Lihui, Professor in Folklore and Mythology, Associate Dean of School of Chinese Language and Literature, Beijing Normal University; Director of Research and Development Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage at BNU; Deputy Chairman of China Folklore Society. Visiting professor of Harvard University (2006-2007) and Indiana University (2000-2001) in USA. Author of many research papers and several monographies including Handbook of Chinese Mythology (ABC-CLIO 2005, Rpt. Oxford University Press 2008), Mythologism: Reconstructing Mythology in Heritage Tourism and Electronic Media (2020), Myths Orally Transmitted in Contemporary China: An Ethnographic Study of Four Communities of Han People (2011 [2018]), Myths and Mythology (2009), The Cult of Nüwa: Myths and Beliefs in China (1997).
