Folk Customs’ Creation and Concealment Caused by Heritage and Tourism : Focusing on the modern inheritance of The Mulao Ethnic Yifan Festival in China

The Chinese Mulao Ethnic Yifan Festival is one of the first traditional cultures to be recognized as a national intangible cultural heritage after which has become a typical regional festival supported by the local government. Therefore, the Yifan Festival is a typical case of reflecting the identification of China s intangible cultural heritage and development of folk cultural resources. The documented text made by the local intellectual elite in 2004 later recognized as a cultural prototype by the Intangible Cultural Heritage system. The cultural innovation form created in the middle of festivalization in 2009 only holds core process of the original form, being left with extensive change in ritual space, masks and performing process.Even though the Yifan Festival has been recognized as an intangible cultural heritage, significant deformation is still happening. It is due to double value standard of preservation and protection in intangible cultural system of China. This subjective standardmakes local governments focus only on the identification and development of the intangible cultural heritage, ignoring protection of cultural prototypes. Cultural retainers also pay more attention to cultural innovation and transformation, and the local residentsonly cooperat with the government s celebration.In short, the original folk customs were gradually squeezed out of the cultural center by the wave of heritage and tourism under negligence of the state, local governments, owners and local residents, and were pushed to outside. A unique phenomenon is observed, that is, cultural center stresses development of the cultural resources while the cultural edge argues inheritance of the original culture.