Chinese Folk Arts Characteristics

Chinese folk art has six basic features:

1. It is the art of the people and by the people. The creators are the vast majority of ordinary people as a group.

2. It is the art for the people. It is intended to meet the needs of their daily work, food, clothing, shelter and transportation; as well as their social life of festivals and ceremonies, of beliefs and taboos.

3. Its cultural implication and art forms are reprehensive of the world view of the community, their aesthetics, their emotional and psychological characteristics and national spirit.

4. It is a sector of Chinese parent art. Emerged in primitive society, Chinese folk art inherited the cultural tradition of national literature and art development throughout each and every period in a history of over several thousand years.

 5. It is distinctively characterized by individual nationality and geographical region.

6. It is created with commonplace tools and indigent raw materials, characterized by rural natural economy of the region.

In sum, folk art is a unique sector among Chinese national art that enjoys the most popularity and with the richest resource of historical culture. It is directly embedded in people's every day life and best characterized by the geographical region it represents. It is a long-standing, signature art form of Chinese nation with over 8000 years of history and cultural progress going all the way back to primitive society. From the worship of nature, totem and ancestor; to the urban residence culture of modern capitalist commodity economy; the cultural identity of each historical period is recognizable in single piece of art work in some cases.It is truly a living fossil and a museum of national historical culture.