XXX Международный конгресс ИИСАА. 19–21 июня 2019 г. Т. 2

Секция XV 54 XXX Международный Конгресс по источниковедению и историографии стран Азии и Африки reserving its 1 st and 2 nd floors for exhibitions. After 5 years of renovation of its facilities and exhibition contents, the IHP Museum was reopened to the public in 2002, in an attempt to realize Dr Fu’s vision of the museum as a space where the material objects are associated with their history. In agreement with Dr Fu’s call urging his colleagues to travel “up to the high- est heaven and down to the Yellow Springs” to seek materials that could only be obtainable through the field research, the Institute’s attitude towards the source studies follows the same route. Current research also intends to discuss the importance of the artefacts presented in the IHP Museum for historical, cultural, and archaeologi- cal knowledge, as well as to elucidate the development of the Institute and Chinese academic studies in general since the 1920s. Yang Yujun (Chung Cheng University, Taiwan) Chinese Notes on Nianhua from Vasily M. Alexeyev’s Studio: Treasure Grove of Folklore Still to be Explored It is well known, that some of the prints fromAcademicianAlexeyev’s collection of Chinese woodblock prints are supplemented with explanatory notes. In 2018, the State Museum of History of Religion in St. Petersburg made some of the manuscripts kept in the Museum available to the public. These notes contain valuable information that deserves more attention. They not only explain the pictorial motives of the prints, but also provide the folklore associated with them. Details range from the time and location of printing, rituals associated with the prints, and the like. The notes also contain continuous “dialogues”, interpretations, even mild arguments. The written “dialogue” between Alexeyev and the Chinese teachers who wrote the comments is immediately noticeable. The writing tools they used are also studied. I shall comment on the stationery differences between east and west of China at the turn of the century. In many notes, one may detect the difference or misunderstanding between literati culture and commoners’ values. I argue that in some cases the discrepancy results in misinterpretation of the prints. Even more curious is a sense of rivalry between the northerners and southerners among the Chinese teachers that manifests itself in one of their notes. I shall attempt to profile the teachers’ educational status and their ideology. If one compares the current notions of nianhua with the content of the notes, one will find a subtle change of interpretation. During the past hundred years, in explaining the content of the prints, different meanings were attributed to the same objects, or the same meaning was represented by different objects. The teachers who wrote the notes did not stick to a single interpretation of a print or a set of pictorial motives. They often record several interpretations to one print. Their inclination to allow multiple interpretations gives us valuable information on their concept of folk art and folklore.