A mammoth project involving the publication of a multi-volume
collection of Chinese folk literature has got off to a good start,
with the exhibition of a first batch of books at the Great Hall of
the People in Beijing last Sunday.
The multi-volume collection of folk literature, Anthology of
Chinese Folk Literature, is a project of the Chinese Folk
Literature and Art Society.
The anthology consists of four categories: Anthology of
Chinese Folk Stories, Anthology of Chinese Folk
Ballads, Anthology of Chinese Proverbs and Folk
Adages, and Anthology of Chinese Folk Epics and Narrative
Poems.
Material for the Anthology of Chinese Folk Stories, for
example, was obtained from a National Social Science Fund special
program, which aims to preserve China's folk legacies. When
completed, it will be comprised of over 2,800 volumes, each one
bearing the name of a county (or city) for a title. According to
the plan, each of China's 2,800 odd counties and cities will have a
volume of its own. Each volume will contain folk fairy tales,
legends, stories and jokes peculiar to the county or city. The
average length of a volume is around 300,000 Chinese
characters.
At present, 12 volumes of the anthology have been published by
the Intellectual Property Publishing House. These volumes are
entitled after the 12 counties and cities in the Dali Bai
Autonomous Prefecture and contain more than four million Chinese
characters and 400 pictures. The complete Anthology of Chinese Folk
Stories is expected to be published by 2010.
Compilation work on the other three anthologies is underway.
(China.org.cn by Wind Gu November 18, 2005)