E-mail: yanyan.ye@mail.ru Tel.: +7 (416) 223-45-00
21, Ignatievskoe Highway, Blagoveshchensk, 675027, Russian Federation
Postgraduate student, Department of Literature and MHC; Researcher, the Laboratory of Frontier Research, Amur State University
The study was supported by the financial program of strategic academic leadership “Priority-2030” as part of the scholarly project FZMU-2022-0008, reg. No. 1022052600017-6.
This article examines the corpus of legends about the miracle root ginseng in one of the first folklore collections of Northeast China, “Chronicles of Rivers and Mountains in Changbaishan” (1908). As is known, ginseng is a plant emanation of the Spirit of the Forest and Mountains in the religious consciousness of the inhabitants of the Far Eastern frontier (Russian Far East, North-East China). In the first decades of the twentieth century, the ethnographers V. K. Arsenyev, N. A. Baykov, and a little later, M. V. Shcherbakov, recorded mythological storis about ginseng. They also partially documented how the phytolatry associated with ginseng is reflected in its various names. For a long time, Russian scholarship was not aware of the northeastern sources of folklore in Chinese dedicated to the mythology of ginseng. In this article, the author examines the first written legends about ginseng in Chinese ethnography, analyzing the context of their formation and connection with the phenomenon of internal migration — the so-called
“Breakthrough to Guangdong.”
Wang Defu (2017) Ginseng Culture — Stories about Ginseng. Ginseng Research. 2017. No. 2. P. 60–64. In Chinese.
Gao Ying (2018) Research [on] “Chronicles of Rivers and Mountains on Mount Changbai Shan.” Changchun. In Chinese.
Zabiyako A. A. (2011) Mifologiya dal’nevostochnogo frontira v soznanii pisatelei-emigrantov [Mythology of the Far Eastern Frontier in the Minds of Emigrant Writers]. Religiovedenie [Religious Studies]. 2011. No. 2. P. 154–170. In Russian.
Zabiyako A. A., Ye Yangyang (2023) «Chudokoreshok» zhen’shen’: ot kitaiskikh legend k khudozhestvennoi ehtnografii dal’nevostochnykh pisatelei (V. K. Arsen’ev, N. A. Baikov i dr.) [The “Miracle Root” Ginseng: From Chinese Legends to the Artistic Ethnography of Far Eastern Writers (V. K. Arsenyev, N. A. Baykov, etc.)]. Russkaya slovesnost’
[Russian literature]. 2023. No. 2. Pp. 93–106. In Russian.
Zabiyako A. A., Ye Yangyang (2023) Imenovaniya zhen’shenya narodami SeveroVostoka Kitaya: morfologiya fitolatrii [The Naming of Ginseng by the Peoples of NorthEast China: The Morphology of Phytolatry]. Religiovedenie [Religious Studies]. 2023. No. 2. Pp. 111–122. In Russian.
Zabiyako A. A., Zhao Haibo (2024) Religioznye traditsii kitaiskikh trudovykh artelei Man’chzhurii (seredina XIX — nachalo XX v.) [The Religious Traditions of Chinese Labor Artels in Manchuria (Mid Nineteenth — early Twentieth Century)]. Religiovedenie [Religious Studies]. 2024. No. 2. Pp. 62–76. In Russian.
Sun Wencai, Wang Yanjuan (1994) Chinese Ginseng Culture. Beijing: Xinhua Publishing House. In Chinese.
Tian Zifu (2004) The Origin and Historical Contribution of the “Transition to Guangdong. The History and Geography of the North-East. 2004. No. 7. Pp. 21–28. In Chinese.
Fan Lijun (2016) Research on the History and Culture of the Transition to Guangdong. Beijing: Social Science Publishing House. In Chinese.
Jin Fengjie, Zhang Bo, Tian Chunjian (2007) Liu Jianfeng: The First Collector of the History of Ginseng of Changbai Mountain. Ginseng Research. 2007. No. 3. Pp. 47–48. In Chinese.
Yangyang Ye. The Image of Ginseng in Manchurian Folklore at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century. Traditional Culture. 2024. Vol. 25. No. 4. Pp 22–32. In Russian.