The customs and habits of Yao nationality

The customs and habits of Yao nationality

Yao costumes are rich and varied, and different regions and branches are also different. Men's and women's clothes are mainly dark blue and blue homespun. Men like collarless blouses, trousers or knee-length shorts, and usually wear belts. Men in "Bai Ku Yao" in Nandan County like knee-length embroidered white trousers. Generally, women wear collarless and large-breasted tops, waist, trousers, short skirts or pleated skirts, and some farmers who wear them knee-length embroider colorful lace in conspicuous places. Nowadays, young people generally wear Chinese clothes, and only when celebrating do they change into national clothes. Women's headdresses have diverse styles and unique styles. They often wear earrings, bracelets, silver medals and other silver ornaments. When wearing ribbons, some women in Dayaoshan also wear curved silver hairpin, weighing about 1kg. From the headdress of Yao women, we can see that girls, unmarried women, married women and which branch of Yao they belong to.

Diet: Yao's diet is mainly rice, corn, sweet potato and taro, and "Camellia oleifera" is popular in some areas. Yao people in Dayaoshan like to preserve "bird's gizzard" and "animal's flesh" as top-grade hospitality, while others preserve foods with unique flavor, such as smoked pork and smoked beef.

Domicile: The houses of Yao people are made of bamboo and wood, which are generally rectangular with three bedrooms and one living room. Some of them are built in dry-column buildings, and most of them are built by mountains and live in groups.

Marriage custom: Yao unmarried young men and women are more free to fall in love. They take advantage of festival celebrations, parties and leisure time to wander around the village, establish feelings through singing or other means, give each other tokens and get married independently. Some people have to get their parents' consent and ask the media for marriage. The phenomenon of Yao's mother-in-law and daughter-in-law is relatively common, and they generally do not marry other ethnic groups. With the development of economy, their contact with the outside world is getting closer and closer, and the number of intermarriage is increasing.

Funeral: The burial of Yao nationality in rural areas is mainly earth burial, and cremation, cliff burial and hanging burial are practiced in some areas and branches.

Taboo: women don't like outsiders to visit before the full moon; The wedding date cannot be chosen on the anniversary of parents' death; Men and women can't sit on the same stool when singing; Don't swear in front of women; Don't spit in the hall; Men are afraid to sit in front of cabinets. Men and women of the same generation should be regarded as brothers and sisters, and names such as "brother-in-law" and "brother-in-law" are taboo.

Yao's colorful life customs are an important part of Yao culture, which reflect Yao's living conditions, living environment, historical experience, sanitary conditions, lifestyle, production development level, religious beliefs and aesthetic tastes, and are the norms and norms of Yao people's common life and ideological behavior.

Family custom

Most Yao houses in mountainous areas are "Maoliao", with small wooden strips tied on the walls, commonly known as "underground thousand-stigma". Cover with fir bark or thatch. There are several wooden houses, mostly three rooms on the first floor, called "three halls". On both sides of the main room, there are two rooms decorated with cedar strips, commonly known as "wearing Chinese fir". Stacking sundries or making pens and toilets in the east; The kitchen and bathroom are intercropped in the west. Yao people are used to taking a hot bath once a day, whether it is cold or hot. There is also a kind of "hanging building" wooden house, half of which is on the flat ground and the other half is supported by trees according to the slope of the mountain. People live above and things are put below, commonly known as "Yao Jia Diaojiao Building". Now, the number of "wool" houses is gradually decreasing.

Yao nationality in hilly area, multi-brick wood structure, blue tile two-story window "three halls" building. Although there are windows upstairs, they are short and uninhabited and used as storage rooms. The main hall is open with side doors on both sides.

Production habit

The Yao people who entered the mountainous area, because of its vast territory and sparse population, practiced the practice of planting land by inserting standard and slash and burn, and "planted this mountain and planted that mountain". Later, with the increase of population, the feudal ruling forces gradually infiltrated into the mountainous areas, and the land of the Yao people was gradually occupied, and they were forced to borrow soil to farm for their livelihood. Conditions for borrowing soil: "Planting trees to the mountains". That is, when Yao people sow crops on borrowed land, they should plant trees for the "mountain owners"; When caring for crops, we should combine the care for trees. When the trees grow to the point where the land can no longer grow crops, the land and trees will be returned to the "mountain owner" and then borrowed from other places for cultivation. Afforestation is used to "cutting" and intercropping forest and grain.

The main food crops are corn, sweet potato, hay, millet, Qiao Mai and sweet potato, intercropping tung oil, palm leaves, tea and medicinal materials. The fertilizer is humus in newly cut soil and burnt plant ash. Production tools are mainly hoes, sickles and axes, supplemented by bamboo and wood tools. Transportation mainly depends on manual handling and picking. Baskets are the most commonly used means of transportation for Yao people. The form of work takes the family as the unit and both men and women work together. When it is necessary to ask for help, the invited people have to help no matter how busy they are. Cultivate the big mountain farm, take the form of sharing shares by households or by labor force, and paying dividends by shares after autumn.

Hunting is one of the production contents of Yao nationality in mountainous areas. Mainly hunting wild boar. As long as it is found that wild boar is harmful to crops, it will be hunted collectively until it is captured or driven away. When hunting, 1 ~ 2 people took the hounds to find the trail, while others kept the cards. The distribution of captured wild animals can even be shared by children who carry them. Individuals hunt mainly with ropes and crossbows.

marriage customs

Making friends before marriage has always been a relatively free time for men and women to make friends and fall in love in Yao Jiaqing's youth. In productive labor, fairs and festivals, songs are often used as a medium to express love. Once both parties agree, they can communicate with each other without interference from their parents. This kind of behavior is called "making friends" by the man and "taking care of young children" by the woman. When getting married formally, if the groom is not a new friend, the boyfriend must prepare a basket of gifts (candy, toiletries) for his girlfriend, which is called "carrying a basket". As a gift, the woman prepares a bag with cloud shoes and a belt inside, which is called "lost package".

In mountainous areas, Pan married with the same surname, while other surnames generally married with different surnames. However, Yao and Han people are generally not allowed to marry, which was slightly loose during the Republic of China. After liberation, there were more and more ethnic exchanges, unity and harmony, and the prohibition of intermarriage was basically liberalized.

The main form of marriage is "husband" (that is, recruiting lang), which is called "correcting thousands" in Yao language. When a man settles in a woman's house, he usually writes a "redundancy book", which contains the obligations and rights of the man after redundancy, and the inheritance of children and property. Generally, those who adopt wives should change their names and surnames, and arrange them according to their daughters' homes. There are also a few couples who changed their surnames. There are two forms of son-in-law, one is called "walking on both sides", and the man still uses his real name. Both husband and wife take care of their parents and have children, the first one takes the mother's surname, the second one takes the father's surname, and so on; Another kind of marriage is called "openly seeking and secretly seeking". This kind of marriage is mostly because the woman's parents are old, her younger siblings are small, and there is no labor force at home. Once the above conditions change, the man takes his wife home, and the children born take the father's surname. Women marry men, mainly in Pingdi Yao. The wife keeps the original surname, and the children take the father's surname.

The man went to the woman's house and was adopted by her husband. The marriage was arranged by the woman's house. The groom was accompanied by a group of unmarried youths on foot, and the woman's house played drums on the way to welcome her. In the evening, a ceremony was held to pay homage to relatives and friends (some of whom came uninvited) and "sit in the singing hall" all night. The woman went to the man's house and was not married. The woman's house was "sitting in a karaoke bar". On the wedding day, the bride goes out with her father, brother or uncle on her back. Then, the village girl went to the man's house with an umbrella, held a memorial ceremony for the bride and accepted congratulations from relatives and friends.

Divorced and remarried (redundant) Lingdong Gaoshan Yao women have a high status. Both parties work together after marriage. If the feelings are not harmonious, either party can file for divorce. Generally, the elderly in the village will be invited to "have tea" and put forward the reasons for divorce. If mediation fails, they will be sentenced to divorce. The husband and wife took a bamboo tube to the mountain, split it in half with one knife, each holding half, walked away and broke up. If a man who marries a wife because of adoption violates the "superfluous book" treaty, the woman can "divorce her husband" and all the property belongs to her. Widows' remarriage is not restricted, but the marriage of brother and sister is forbidden. After liberation, Yao people went through the formalities according to the provisions of the Marriage Law.

Before the weeping married woman got married, she visited her relatives, friends and sisters in the village and got together at home for two consecutive nights, having tea first and having a banquet at night. After the banquet, everyone gathered in the hall, singing "female songs", telling private affairs or laughing, and "sitting in the karaoke room". Brides will "cry for marriage" to their relatives and friends in turn according to their generations, and relatives and friends will give "red envelopes".

Three days after the groom got married, the groom went back to his family, and the women in the woman's village came together to fight for the groom to show that they would not abuse the bride in the future. In some villages, this is the first Spring Festival after marriage. The groom pays a New Year call to Yue's family. The young men and women in the village beat gongs and drums (sometimes dancing dragons and lions) to congratulate the groom, and the groom returned a "red envelope", also called beating the groom. Later, it gradually evolved into a village where women and children demanded "bride price" money, or they would not stop, sometimes embarrassing the groom.

Funeral custom

Yao people are buried in the soil. When the old man lay dying, he combed his hair, took a shower and put on a shroud, and his relatives were waiting to "see them off". After death, he moved to the church (male left and female right), and the whole family mourned. The children went to relatives and friends to mourn and chose auspicious burial. It usually takes three days to stop, so please ask the teacher to be a "Dojo". The poor have a bowl of water to "open the way". If the deceased is a teacher, please ask the teacher at the same level to recite a spell, tie the body to the bench stairs with red cloth, and enter the coffin after the ceremony.

At the funeral, the host only led him to the door, and the filial man or daughter led the way up the mountain with a torch or a kitchen knife. Gaoshan Yao doesn't pay attention to any "feng shui" treasure. As long as you choose a place at the foot of the mountain not far from the house, you will be buried immediately.

At present, the Yao nationality has implemented the funeral reform, and the funeral mode has begun to try cremation.