A Preliminary Study on the Collection of the Former Museum of Oriental Ethnology of Beijing Fu-Jen University

Understanding the Multi-Layered History of Chinese Folklore

Abstract

To understand Chinese folklore comprehensively, a new perspective is needed.

Therefore, this paper rereads the history of Chinese folklore from the perspective of objects and focuses on the former Museum of Oriental Ethnology (established in the 1940s) of Beijing Fu-Jen University, which followed a different process from the well-known collection of Peking University or Sun Yat-sen University.

This museum had a unique collection of ‘Minsu Wupin’, which included not only wedding or funerary and other ceremonial objects or artefacts but also archaeological excavations,including photographs, rolls pictures and models of buildings. In the exhibition, Chinese objects were classified according to ‘Religion’, ‘Annual Customs’, ‘Native Art’, ‘Children’s Toys’, and ‘Archaeology’. In contrast, the Japanese objects were not classified but were composed with an awareness of three aspects: ‘Mingu’, ‘Mingei’, and ‘Minka’.

By focusing on objects collected from both China and Japan up to 1942, this paper shows another aspect of Chinese folklore that has been basically neglected. It also mentions the director of this museum and the first editor-in-chief of Asian Ethnology, the missionary Matthias Eder, to call attention to the person who played a bridging role while writing the history of folklore.