Ancient Jiangnan has what unique folk beliefs?

For example, in most villages in ancient Jiangnan, every year in June and July will be held in the "Qingmiao will". Village Residents of the village carried Liu Manggong and other village deities on a parade through the fields, the parade of drums and gongs, and to be inserted in the fields of colorful flags. Such activities will continue for ten days and half a month, seemingly praying for the gods to bless a good harvest, but in fact there is also a function - June and July is when the rice tasseling, is a high incidence of pests and diseases. Whether it's a loud parade or colorful flags all over the field, the purpose is to deter pests and protect seedlings.

Traditional agriculture, "watching the sky to eat", the grasp of the climate and forecasting is very important. In the Jiangnan region, there are a lot of climate folklore proverbs. For example, Jiangnan yellow plum day is generally in the lunar calendar in May, the local legend of May 13 each year for the Guan Di birthday. On this day, Guan Gong will bring the Green Dragon Crescent Blade and go to the Cave of the Immortals to sharpen his sword, so the rain at this time is called "sharpening rain".

There are also legends that the 20th of May is the Day of the Dragon. On this day, the little dragon in the sky parted with his parents and shed tears because he could not bear to be separated, and the tears turned into rain on earth. The people will be this day under the rain known as "split dragon rain", prediction of a year of wind and rain. In the south of the Yangtze River, the farmers' proverbs are even more straightforward: "May 20, the dragon rain, stone cracks are all rice." Similar proverbs, although the changes in climate are linked to the activities of the gods, essentially reflect the observation and exploration of the laws of nature by the laborers in the Jiangnan region during their long-term production practices.

Whenever spring begins, many places also hold ceremonies to honor Jumang, the god of spring, commonly known as the spring festival. Legend has it that Jumang, a god with a human face and a bird's body, riding on two dragons, is a descendant of Fuxi, an important agricultural deity. His left hand holds a seed and his right hand holds a compass, symbolizing the measurement of the land and the sowing of plants, bringing hope for spring.

Today, there is also a Wutong Ancestral Hall in Quzhou, Zhejiang Province, where the main deity enshrined is Jumang, the god of spring, and in 2016, when the "24 Solar Terms" was listed as a World Intangible Cultural Heritage, the Jumang Festival in Quzhou is representative of the spring festival.

On the basis of folk customs and beliefs, people in the Jiangnan region further summarized a lot of agricultural and climate laws. One of the representative works is the end of the Yuan and early Ming Dynasty book "Tianjia Wuxing", which collected a large number of popular agricultural proverbs in the south of the Yangtze River, in particular, through the appearance of the animals, movements, etc. to divine the agricultural abundance and failure, including the "drought and water to divine the sound of frogs," "the earth oxen to account for the year," and so on.

Therein lies a lot of scientific wisdom. Such as "crows bath wind, magpie bath rain, bugs bath break wind and rain" and other proverbs, indicating that the ancestors knew early on by observing the habits of birds to determine the weather changes. Interestingly, in some rural areas of the Jiangnan region, the Tianjia Wuxing still had a great influence on the unfolding of agricultural production until after the founding of New China