Folk Legends of Zhanghu Town

The ancestors of the people living in Zhanghu Town in Nanping City were all immigrants from the Central Plains. For thousands of years, they have inherited the "Min-Yue legacy" of the ancient Min-Yue people who respected snakes and protected them. Every year in the first month of the lunar calendar (sixth to twenty-third) Lantern Festival, to welcome the tour is "bamboo snake", into the summer "July 7 Eve" temple fair to welcome the race is a live snake. Folk even have "no reason to kill the snake tortoise guilty", "people walk the human road, snake snake road" and other maxims, quit killing snakes.

They revered snake performance is the "Min Yue legacy", the snake love and respect the color of respect. Here is the "snake" hometown, snake is enshrined as "God", many about the "Snake God" legend is still circulating. According to legend, one year, Zhanghu Ban flooded, and after the disaster, plague and disease raged, hundreds of townspeople were killed by the disease, and the people had no way to live, and there was a scene of "ten thousand households were in mourning and ghosts were singing". Lian Gong, the local government official, went into the disaster area and went to the households to cure the sick people and drive away the evil spirits. He also led the villagers to dredge the river, to promote and eliminate the evils, to cure the floods, and taught the villagers to use all kinds of industry technology to strengthen the people's body, to save all the people from the sea of misery. The evils of the water were expelled and cured, and the townspeople learned a skill from Lian Fuyin, and production resumed development, and the townspeople lived and worked in peace and contentment.

The place returned to its previous prosperity and bustle. Lian Gong, dedicated to the people of the disease, was the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar in Gutian County, Zhan Ling, died in the line of duty. Sense of Lian Gong has a favor to the townspeople, the townspeople will be in the riverside to build a small temple, from the "Zhan Ling" Lian Gong to get to the temple to take fire incense, in the temple to set up a shrine to worship. To this day, it is still the custom to take fire and incense to Zhan Ling in Gutian County before the July temple fair every year.

According to legend, Lian Gong learned from Maoshan and was a master of his art, specializing in curing demons and ghosts in the water. Inside the temple, there is a sign poem for people to draw and ask for divination. The poems are "like a boat off the beach", "lonely boat meets the wind", "a smooth future", "across the sea to get the boat, "Xi got snake small change, into a dragon outside the sky" and so on. People on the water boat put wood, have to first to the temple to burn incense worship praying for "master Gong" blessing peace. It is said that the water in danger as long as the three calls "Master Gong Zuoxian", will be able to turn the danger into peace. Liangong entrusted with the water, the water's edge of the family's aspirations, to the temple inscription as evidence: "town people without boundaries will respond to any request, to protect the peace of land and water, and do not spare the labor.

According to legend, the Ming Dynasty Yongli thirteen years on the night of October 14, when Zhao Tianshi recovered the White Horse Jing passed through Zhanghu Ban, Lian Gong appeared python in its original form, Zhao Tianshi wanted to be chopped, the townspeople shouted, "Lian Gong, Qinglong good! Good!" The people of the village shouted, "Lian Gong Qinglong is good!" The Zhao Tianshi did not want to harm him.

The ancient Min-Yue people worship snake totem has a legacy, Lian Gong again show the original shape of the townspeople worship the "Snake God", Lian Gong is a python reincarnation of the spirit of Zhan Ling in Gutian, the local have "to get the way in the Gutian Zhan Ling, the spirit of the Zhanghu Lian Gong Temple," the said passed down to the present day. to this day. Since then, the snake has become the "god" of the people of Zhanghu Ban, and the legacy of revering the snake has been passed down. In the summer of the following year, the Min River flooded again, and the water drifted in heaps of raw wood gathered at the riverside in front of the temple, and the townspeople saw so much wood gathered in front of the temple, and claimed that Lian Gong had manifested his spirit. The wood will be lifted to the shore, planning to use this batch of wood to build a large-scale "Lian Gong Temple". The townspeople collected large donations and built a large temple on the site of the "Lian Gong Temple", which was called "Fuqing Hall".

Inside the temple there are three snake king gold body for worship. The three snake kings were surnamed Zhang, Xiao and Lian, and were sworn brothers (one said they were blood brothers). Lian Gong is the "master snake king", but also "nine days of thunder law master Lian Gong master," the number, so people are called Lian Gong for the master Gong, people still call the "Fuqing Hall" for the "Master Hall". "The temple was built, and every year in the seventh month of the lunar calendar, the temple was opened to the public. The temple was built, and every year, on the seventh day of the seventh month, the townspeople carried out the statue of Lian Gong and toured the township, praying for the peace of the township, and for food and clothing.

People have been praising the achievements of Lian Gong for generations and honoring him for thousands of years. There is a temple inscription as evidence: "counting through the vicissitudes of life why ask a thousand merits, although the painstaking just want to be happy with the people" "MinYue legacy only I Hufeng (i.e., ZhangHuBan) HuXian, Xiantu Dragon Cave crowns this Snake King's Treasure Palace".

Today, Zhanghu Ban people moved to build a new town due to the construction of ShuiKou power station, "Snake King Temple" original demolition of the original construction and re-established at the southern end of the new town by the lake, has been repaired. Thousands of years of snake culture, "Chong snake" has been injected with new cultural connotations. Here has been held for fifteen consecutive years "Zhanghu Snake Culture Festival", formed a unique MinYue legacy, "Snake God" legend and "Chong snake" folk culture has been famous at home and abroad. Zhanghu Town Snake Festival, held on the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar every year, it is the unique Zhanghu region of the revered snake folklore. "Zhanghu Ban has a long-established Snake King Temple, and every year on the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar, the townspeople hold a grand tour of the Snake God, where the men of the town, each with a live snake wrapped around his body or in his hand, parade in a procession carrying a large live snake and a statue of the Snake God.

Parade, streamers, drums and music, firecrackers and firecrackers sound shocked the clouds, the content of its procession and the scale of the huge, in the country is rare, is the Minyue clan snake tribal totem worship relics of the typical embodiment of folk cultural activities.

With this, comparable to the snake lamp activities, is the snake totem worship mutation in northern Fujian folk cultural activities in another vivid performance: every year during the Lantern Festival on the first day of the first month of the Lunar Calendar, Nanping Zhanghuzhan town, Jianyang Huangkeng town, as well as Wuyi Mountain, Gloss and other counties and cities of some of the countryside, are to be held to swim in the snake lamp activities."