Linna Huang     Yihong Yang

The second Saturday of every June is the National “Cultural Heritage Day ”. The theme of the first “Cultural Heritage Day” is “Preservation of Cultural Heritage, Protection of Spiritual Homeland”  .

Among the intangible cultural heritages, the language is very fragile because it could not be seen or touched. Scholars say that there are 6000 different ethnic languages in the world, among which more than 5000 will be disappearing in the following 100 years. Thus, the protection of language got more attention from many related institutions home and abroad. Among the fist group of the Oral and Intangible Cultural Heritage announced by the UNESCO, 14 are related to language, which is accounting for 74%. Among the 518 items of National Intangible Cultural Heritage announced by China in 2006, 255 items are related to the language.

How to inherit and promote these languages? How to help the public understand, like these languages and transmit them to future generations?

Based on our experience in transmitting Naxi language and Dongba culture in the primary schools of Old Town District, we suggest that school inheritance is a very efficient and important way for inheritance of the languages.

1. Well-Aware Naxi language and Dongba culture’s danger of disappearing

Naxi language was a popular language in the Old Town before 1950s, however, it is replaced by the Han Chinese language at present. There are only 30% of Naxi students in primary school could understand Naxi language, and18% could speak. Moreover, the rate is going down.  The 12 old Dongba priests, invited for Dongba Daba Meeting in 1983, died one by one in recent years, and only one is still alive at present. Hence, Dongba  is facing a problem of disappearing.

2.  It is a good way to inherit Dongba culture in School

There are 3 traditional ways for transmitting Dongba culture:

a. inheritance within family—from father to son

b. inheritance from a teacher—teacher and apprentice

c. “private school” inheritance—it was planed, but did not practice

After the Liberation(1949),  the inheritance of Dongba culture has been broken for half of century due to related social reasons. Although Lijiang Dongba Cultural Museum and Dongba Cultural Research Academy has made great contributions on Dongba culture inheritance in the past 10 years, they are still facing a lot of difficulties in inheritance work due to their limitation on work scope.

After serious research and many times of practice, we find there are following benefits in conducting inheritance work in school:

a. enough students    b. enough time    c. school regulation and enough teachers

3. The principle and methodology of school education related Naxi language and Dongba

Culture

a. the course time is local course time

b. dismiss its religious perspective, and strengthen its cultural perspective; in other words, the principle is not spread religion in school;

c.  the sources of teachers are mainly depending on  local Education Bureau’s training, moreover,  some external teachers will be invited;

d. No examination, but a small test at the end of term

The practical methodology:

a. open Naxi language course in the forth grade of primary school

b. goal: based on Naxi Romanized characters, and mainly focus on the teaching of Naxi language and Dongba culture

c. textbooks: divided into two levels. The first level is the starting level.  Each school could , taking “Naxi Old Saying” as its guidebook, compile textbooks by themselves before a series of textbooks related to inheritance of culture got published;

d. make up inheritance  proposal; combined with National school education system, and conduct traditional culture, patriotism and spiritual civilization education.

4. got some achievements in inheritance work

a. to establish a inheritance net started “from point to line and from line to area”;

b.the Naxi culture inheritance work are accepted by the parents and the society;

c. the Naxi language environment has changed into a relatively better situation; more children show their interest in learning the language.

5. compile and publish textbooks; promote the inheritance work

A series of textbooks, including Naxi pictographs, international Romanization , Naxi Romanized characters, Han Chinese Pinyin and Han Chinese characters, has been published and used in grade 1 –grade 4 of the primary schools in Old Town District and Yulong County of Lijiang.  The CD accompanied with this series of textbooks has been made , and the DVD are in the process of compiling.

6. the inheritance work depend on the combination of family, society and school

The inheritance work could not depend only on the school. It needs the support and concern from the whole society. Each family should become the students or teachers of the inheritance project.

7. the inheritance work need the input from government’s support

Only depend on the input could the textbooks be published and walked into the students’ bags with free charge; only depend on the input could the inheritance work continue and get results.

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