Abstract:

  We cannot simply attribute the decline of folk opera at the end of the 20th century to modern media and social transformation. Through an ethnographic case study of shadow play in Hua County, we can find that there were three climaxes of the folk opera in the central Shaanxi Plain after the founding of new China: about 1956, 1963 and the early 1980s. The exploration of the social reasons behind it may help us sort out the development of Chinese folk culture in the second half of the 20th century. Peoplecenteredness and organization are found to be two major clues that underpinned the development of folk opera. Organization is important in that it is the requirement of socialist art and literature to ensure the prosperity of folk opera by organizing the artists and providing them with organizational, institutional and institutional guarantee. Peoplecenteredness means that all is for people and relying on people, under which history and the given times met and merged in a better way, thus enabling artists and farmers to conduct indepth exchanges to explore the direction of the future cultural development.

Key words: peoplecenteredness, folk art, organization, shadow play