The History and Culture of Shawan Town

Shawan is an ancient town of Lingnan culture with a history of nearly 800 years. Named for being located on the half-moon beach in Guwan. It is also the Lingnan Folk Architecture Art Museum. The ancient town completely retains the comb layout of traditional villages in Lingnan area. Liugengtang, Baomo Garden, Nanyue Garden and Aoshan Ancient Temple Group are masterpieces of Lingnan architectural art, and Shawan is the birthplace of Guangdong music. Shawan ancient town has a strong flavor of traditional life and active folk art, creating intangible cultural resources with local characteristics. He's school of elegance began with He Bozhong, the "king of pipa". After several generations' efforts, it was unique in the period of "He Jia San Jie" and developed into an influential school in Guangdong music scene. Cantonese opera that appeals to both refined and popular tastes is called "artistic conception music". Therefore, Shawan has become one of the regions with the most active Guangdong music in history and the most historical remains of Guangdong music, and still maintains the tradition of "private board" in Qing Dynasty.

As the "hometown of folk sculpture" in Guangdong Province, Shawan Ancient Town has preserved a large number of fine arts, such as brick carving, wood carving, stone carving, gray carving and mural painting. Its artistic style has strong Lingnan characteristics. In addition, there are many traditional cultures active among the people, such as the birthday of the Northern Emperor, the Aoyu Dance, the Dragon Boat Festival, Cantonese Opera and orchids.

Shawan also has delicious traditional snacks-ginger buried milk, milk white cake and so on.

Betty's birthday

Beidi's birthday is the most important festival in Gushawan. In the past, every year on the third day of the third lunar month, Beidi's birthday and Shawan held a "God Meeting". The northern emperor's color patrol, lion dance, dragon dance and fish dance will certainly add to the fun, and the drums will be loud and huge. Today, Shawan people's worship of the Northern Emperor is still unabated, and various folk arts originating from the birthday of the Northern Emperor still shine brilliantly.

Shawan piaose

Floating colors in Shawan is a folk art activity with local characteristics in Shawan, which is popular in the Pearl River Delta and affects the whole country. It combines materials, machinery, music, modeling, decoration and other techniques, with colorful cabinets as the display stage. The figure standing on the color cabinet is called "screen", and the figure rising in the air is called "gone with the wind". The two are connected into an organic whole by the colored stalks in the middle, thus showing a folklore or drama story fragment.

The floating color in Shawan originated from the middle of Ming Dynasty to the end of Ming Dynasty, and developed from the entertainment program of Beidi birthday banquet in Shawan. From the mid-Qing Dynasty to the early years of the Republic of China, it reached its peak, revived after the reform and opening up, and experienced three major innovations in content and skills. There are also color cabinets and color stalks in the village more than 0/0/00 years ago. The traditional floating color activity in Shawan is held every year on the third day of the third lunar month, organized by rural workshops in turn, with 20-30 colors each time, accompanied by eight-tone gongs and drums, and paraded in the main streets.

There are more than 100 colors in Shawan, and each color has a theme, which is divided into four categories: first, folk stories and myths and legends, such as the goddess the Goddess Chang'e flying to the moon; Second, drama stories, such as "Water Over Jinshan"; The third is to wish good luck, such as "going up"; Fourth, reflect local folk customs, such as rain hitting bananas. There is a tradition of dragon and lion in Shawan, among which the sandpit dragon and lion troupe is the most famous. On the basis of the original skills of the Southern School of Lion Dance, the Shakeng Dragon and Lion Troupe absorbed the skills of the Northern School of Lion Dance, and combined the high-stakes lion dance and the folk martial arts "Plum Blossom Pile" with the Southern School of Lion Dance to form a unique sand pit lion dance. According to incomplete statistics, since its establishment, the Dragon and Lion Group in Shakeng has won more than 50 gold and silver awards in international, domestic, provincial and municipal competitions.