Folk Cultural Production with Danwei Characteristics

This chapter examines folk storytelling performances staged in and by various government work units or state-owned enterprises for public relations purposes, with particular emphasis on how the production of folk cultural tradition became intertwined with danwei business promotion in Yan'an. Using the case of northern Shaanxi storytelling, the chapter considers how the practice of folk tradition is linked to work-unit messages and, sometimes, national ideology promotion. It discusses the ways in which folk cultural production today concerns complicated political, commercial, and social relations with work units. It shows how the production of folk tradition is increasingly adapted to danwei public relations events and campaigns, while, at the same time, danwei events also become the spaces wherein traditional folk art forms find new developments, audiences, and visibility in the age of urbanization and marketization.