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| THE MECHANISM OF HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT RELATIONSHIPS IN THE FORMING OF TRADITIONAL REGIONAL CULTURE——A Case Study of Huizhou Culture |
| KONG Xiang, LU Tao |
| The Center for Modern Chinese City Studies, Department of Urban and Regional Economy, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China |
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Abstract Human-environment relationship is one of the most important fields in Human Geography. Huizhou culture, is one of the most representative regional cultures. So it can reflect the forming mechanism of regional culture when human-environment relationship is generally balanced. This paper analyzes the mechanism of human-environment relationship in the forming of traditional regional culture with a case study of Huizhou culture. The field survey of Huizhou culture and relevant literatures indicates that although material cultural landscapes like ancient villages are the most important legacies of Huizhou culture in the aspect of travel, Huizhou merchants are still regarded as the most important Huizhou cultural trait. The further analysis indicates that it was the special physical geographic environment of Huizhou which attracted lots of northern aristocrats to settle in. Moreover, the contradiction between the large population and little land urged Huizhou residents to "make livings on business". Huizhou relied on high quality of population, solid economic foundation and continuous cultural communion to form the highly-developed Confucianism business culture in Song and Ming Dynasty. The further research of Huizhou culture indicates that in the forming process of traditional regional culture, physical geographic environment plays an important role in population agglomeration. While the population agglomeration and its transcendental culture as well as its characters of social and economic structure will determine the developing traits of regional culture. That is to say, the characters of the social and economic structure play a key role in the forming of regional culture traits. And physical geographic environment is the important conditioning factor of the characters of population's social and economic structure. In the forming process of traditional regional culture, the social and economic structure of population can be seen as key connecting factors in the interaction between human and environment.
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Received: 28 November 2008
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2010, Vol. 25 
