Сhinese folk tales in XX-XXI centuries: fundamental research approaches

The subject of the research is works on Chinese folklore of XX-XXI centuries. Although folklore is an important part of China's cultural heritage, some aspects of folklore studies (whether theoretical or practical ones) remain unconsidered, which contradicts the modern Chinese tendency to take interest in own cultural origins. Based on the method of textual analysis, the author aims at studying the existing corpora of Chinese research papers on folk tales. The article analyzes genesis and development of this discipline, identifies the main scientific achievements in this field, designates a classification of Chinese folk tales and of values that they convey. Moreover, the paper outlines the problems that Chinese folk tales scholars face today. Apart from that, the conducted research shows that there is a number of methodological problems and discrepancies in existing works on Chinese folklore, as well as there is no interdisciplinary approach to Chinese folk tales. What indicates the necessity to work out modern approaches to the research in the field of Chinese folk tales.