Cultural Overview of Minnan Cultural Ecological Protection Experimental Zone

Minnan culture, with its unique geographical position, connects the Central Plains and Wu Chu, followed by Taiwan Province Province and Southeast Asia, with a wide coverage and influence. The hard living environment of Minnan people has created the essence of Minnan culture: the spirit of "dare to fight and love to win". The formation, sublimation and further development of this cultural essence has its objective inevitability, which is also a major feature that distinguishes Minnan culture from Central Plains culture and other Fujian cultures.

First of all, Minnan culture belongs to immigrant culture. The core area of southern Fujian is mainly in Quanzhou Plain in the lower reaches of Jinjiang and Zhangzhou Plain in the lower reaches of Jiulong River. Later, with the accelerated flow of Han people in the north and the continuous expansion to the south, it promoted and accelerated the development and development of southern Fujian. In order to adapt to the difficult environment of wandering and trekking, the Central Plains culture took root and grew up in southern Fujian after experiencing fierce collision, social changes and self-sublation, but its integrity was challenged, which made some differences with the local culture of the Central Plains, thus deeply branding it as an immigrant culture.

Secondly, Minnan culture has strong compatibility and openness. On the one hand, in the process of continuous migration and gathering of Han people to the south, there is a blend between Han people who moved in from different origins and different historical stages, and between Han people and local ethnic minorities in southern Fujian. On the other hand, during the Tang, Song and Yuan Dynasties, Quanzhou Port's external traffic entered an unprecedented period of prosperity and became an oriental trading port with "international merchants on the rise". It attracts people from many countries in Asia, Africa and even Europe to trade and engage in cultural exchange activities. They not only settled in Quanzhou for business, but also spread Islam and its culture. It can be seen that in the process of multi-ethnic cultural integration and development, this multi-cultural combination is very inclusive and open to the outside world.

The appearance of Minnan culture is deeply influenced by foreign culture and immigrant culture. This has formed the humanistic spirit of Minnan people who dare to take risks, break rules and regulations, make progress and actively explore. This enterprising spirit of Minnan people was fully exerted in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. But under the strong suppression of the feudal government, they also paid a heavy price for it. Southern Fujian has barren land, dense population and many hills and mountains, especially in coastal plain areas. Owning land and farming are no longer enough to support the family. This natural environment, coupled with the influence of immigrant culture, prompted a large number of Minnan people to move overseas and Taiwan Province Province with their wives and children, thus realizing "borrowing the sea for the city". It can be said that Minnan culture is not only a reasonable extension of China culture, but also the result of accepting foreign culture and marine culture. So Minnan people pay more attention to the pursuit and development of wealth. This spirit of mercantilism, paying attention to the continuous improvement of living conditions and being pragmatic and enterprising has played an important role in the business philosophy and enterprise development of overseas Minnan people. Minnan culture has distinctive characteristics, and has preserved many original ecological intangible cultural heritages and material cultural heritages such as Nanyin and Liyuan Opera, which fully embodies the diversity, integrity and uniqueness of Minnan culture. The connotation of Minnan culture includes not only farming culture and maritime commercial culture in a broad sense, but also architectural culture, folk culture (diet, clothing, architecture, marriage, birthday and folk taboos), religious culture, folk art, clan culture and Minnan dialect in a narrow sense.

Architectural culture

Architectural culture According to their own living environment and aesthetic taste, Minnan people rely on their own intelligence to create Minnan architecture that adapts to their living environment and conforms to their own aesthetics. According to the function, it can be divided into folk houses, ancestral halls, temples, temples, archways, towers, buildings, pavilions, terraces, pavilions, bridges, coastal defense buildings and so on. The architecture in southern Fujian is rich and colorful, which is a masterpiece of originality and concentration of foreign architecture. Among them, the most distinctive "palace-style" building in the first residential building is commonly known as "Gu Lou", and the residence of returned overseas Chinese Cai, located in Guanqiao Village, Nan 'an, Quanzhou, is its masterpiece. The residence was built in the Guangxu period of Xianfeng, Qing Dynasty. The main building is the same as the ancient large-scale pavilions common in southern Fujian. There are three or five rooms with protective pavilions, which protrude outside the hall, with symmetrical sides and horizontal layout. The depth is the second, third and fourth floors, and the courtyard unit, hall, corridor, water flowing through the courtyard, hard mountain, rolled shed roof, bucket wooden frame, red tile pipe and dovetail roof are organized by hall as a unit. The difference is that the building is a group of buildings, carved with beams and painted with buildings, decorated with exquisite wood carvings, brick carvings, stone carvings and marl carvings, and made of general carvings, relief carvings, line carvings or round carvings. The carving theme is very extensive and the carving skill is exquisite. Carved birds and beasts, flowers and birds, fish and insects, opera stories and landscape figures are lifelike. This residential building complex not only inherits and retains the traditional architectural style and characteristics of Minnan nationality, but also partially absorbs the decorative art features of Nanyang culture and western architectural art, which is a masterpiece of the combination of ancient residential architectural art in southern Fujian and architectural art outside China. In addition, the "Fanzilou", commonly known as "foreign architectural style" built by combining Chinese and western cultures, is also his masterpiece.

folk culture

Folk culture refers to the general name of folk cultural events (things and phenomena) created, appreciated and passed down by Minnan people. Its connotation is very extensive, including customs of production, life, life, faith, literature, entertainment and social organization. Among these customs, in addition to the traditional customs of the Chinese nation, folk literature with literary customs (folk songs and nursery rhymes) has the most local characteristics; Folk dances ("breast-beating dance"), bamboo horse riding, dragon dancing, lion dancing, "drum riding", "dragon boat racing" (Dragon Boat Festival) and "cake beating" (Mid-Autumn Festival) in entertainment customs are particularly active during festivals.

Diet and living habits

"Food is the most important thing for people", and diet is the first need of people's material life. It has strong characteristics of the times and distinctive local cultural color. The first thing Minnan people do in the morning is to make tea. Minnan people call tea "MC Davi", which is comparable to rice. They call drinking tea "eating tea", which is in the same position as eating, to show that tea and rice are equally important in people's lives. As Wang Anshi said, "Tea is for civilian use, which is equal to rice and salt, and can't be used for one day". The tea-drinking custom in southern Fujian is mainly to drink Kung Fu tea, which is called "Kung Fu tea" because it is more time-consuming and laborious than drinking tea. Drinking tea generally requires "tea matching", especially drinking high-concentration kungfu tea, which can prevent "tea drunkenness", and binge drinking is the most important wine custom in southern Fujian. As the saying goes, "no wine, no table", people drink to celebrate festivals, such as Spring Festival wine, Dragon Boat Festival realgar wine and Mid-Autumn Festival wine. Minnan people have three meals a day, mainly rice, porridge in the morning and evening, and lunch at noon. In Minnan dialect, porridge is called rice. It's thin, thick and thin. Thick porridge is called "roasted head and minced meat", which means "dry water", and thin porridge is called "Mi An Zi". As for the Chinese New Year's food customs, there are different food customs according to different festivals. For example, during the Spring Festival and New Year's Eve, in addition to eating all kinds of chicken, duck, fish and vegetables around the stove, it is customary to eat a hot pot. The old copper hot pot, burning charcoal fire in the middle, symbolizes the reunion of the whole family around the stove.

The development and inheritance of Minnan cuisine also has a gradual process. Originated in Quanzhou, it spread to southern Fujian cultural circles such as Zhangzhou, Taiwan Province and Xiamen. After Quanzhou people came to Nanyang, due to frequent exchanges, foreign exchanges expanded, and the exchange and integration of food culture became closer. In this way, the flavor of Minnan cuisine not only affected Zhangzhou, Xiamen, Chaoshan and Taiwan Province Strait, but also exported to the vast Southeast Asia. Many people who travel to Southeast Asia will be surprised to find that the food they eat is the flavor of their hometown, and the food stalls on the street can also eat oysters, rolls and jiaozi with minced meat. In recent years, many foreign cuisines have settled in Quanzhou, and some overseas Chinese have returned to their hometown to open restaurants. Minnan people can eat authentic Indonesian food, Vietnamese food, Myanmar food and Singapore food when they go to the streets.

Clothing custom

With the progress of ideas, people's clothing has also changed. Among them, the unique feature of Minnan dress is Huian women's dress, and its biggest feature is "short clothes and eye-catching". There is a jingle that vividly summarizes the sacrifice of Hui 'an women's traditional dress as "feudal head, democratic belly, saving clothes and waste pants". In addition, there are people who wear clogs, bracelets and anklets for women and children.

Architectural custom

Architecture is closely related to people's lives, so it has also formed a series of folk customs. For example, before building a house, choose the ecliptic to break ground, worship the beam and complete the ceremony. For example, before breaking ground, choose the auspicious day of the ecliptic, put on record to set up offerings for the pig's head, burn incense and light candles, set off firecrackers, and worship the gods and the ground, commonly known as the groundbreaking ceremony or the groundbreaking ceremony. After the ceremony, the owner who built the house was treated with a sumptuous table. In addition, there are customs such as nailing bamboo boards on wooden thresholds and digging wells in selected places to find springs.

marriage customs

Since ancient times, the marriage customs in southern Fujian have followed the basic procedures of the traditional "six rituals" of the Han nationality, namely, accepting gifts (that is, proposing marriage), asking names (that is, female surnames), Naji (engagement and funeral), accepting gifts (giving gifts after marriage), inviting invitations (informing the wedding date) and welcoming relatives (getting married). Among them, special attention is paid to the custom of "marriage". The bride usually goes back to her mother's house on the fourth day after marriage, which is called "guest" and "Hui Zi". A "guest" must go back to her husband's house that day, and it must be dark when she gets home. As the saying goes, "it is black to the touch and dry to live." This means that doing so will give birth to boys.

Birthday ceremonies and customs

In the past, due to factors such as living and sanitary environment, people were considered to live long when they were 50 years old. Therefore, Minnan folk customs celebrate their birthdays every ten days from the age of 50 (in some places, birthdays are only celebrated at the age of 60), and some celebrate their birthdays one year earlier or one year later (that is, every nine days or 1 1). Generally speaking, lanterns are hung on the Hall of Eternal Life, with a gold word "Shou" or Shou Xingtu in the middle and birthday couplets on both sides. Wearing new clothes or shroud, the birthday boy sat in the longevity hall and accepted Zhang Er's prayer. Birthday party is an important part of birthday celebration. Generally, guests are given a banquet at noon or in the evening on the birthday, and there must be a dish of "trotters' noodles" in the dishes. Taking trotters is auspicious, which has a strong meaning and prolongs life.

Folk taboo

Taboo is a traditional custom, a concept and practice that restricts social behavior and belief activities. Minnan people have also formed some taboos about food, clothing, housing, communication and language in their daily lives, such as knocking on bowls with chopsticks when eating, because in the old society only beggars would knock on empty bowls to beg. Chopsticks should not be inserted into the rice bowl, which is related to the funeral custom of "worshipping feet and rice" in folk customs. Don't hit people with brooms, otherwise it will be unlucky, because people regard brooms as spiritual things. Avoid planting banana trees and banyan trees in the courtyard. It is said that bananas are seedless, so they are not conducive to fertility. Banyan is regarded as a sacred tree (because it is the oldest), and it is disrespectful and unlucky to plant it in the family yard.

Religious culture

Religious culture refers to the religious beliefs and folk beliefs of Minnan people. In addition to Taoism, Buddhism and Islam, Minnan people mainly believe in Hinduism, Christianity and Manichaeism. The most striking feature is that the people believe in the ancient gods of the Chinese nation (such as Land Lord and Guanyin), and also believe in real people who are regarded as gods, such as Baosheng the Great (Wu Kun), Mazu (Molin) and Guangze Wang Zun (commonly known as "Saint Maharaja"

Clan culture is also an important part of Minnan culture. The clan culture in southern Fujian is very developed, which is marked by attaching importance to clan affection, compiling genealogy and ancestral temple architecture.

Min Nan dialect

Minnan dialect refers to the local language created and used by Minnan people. This dialect is one of the most important dialects in Chinese and one of the eight major dialects in China. It is one of the 60 most representative languages in the world. According to statistics, there are as many as 80 million people in the world who speak Minnan (between 80 million and 65.438+0.2 billion). The accents in Quanzhou and Zhangzhou are mainly Fujian160,000, Taiwan Province Province 20 million and Nanyang120,000. About 2 million in other parts of the world).