Life etiquette and custom in folk dough modeling and dough modeling

Face-dressing plays an important role in the custom of New Year, and plays an irreplaceable role in all the ceremonies to show the meaning of life.

The full moon was the first grand ceremony when people came to this world, and the dough sculptures at that time were also quite exquisite. In Huoxian area, grandma wants to make a straight food called "Kun Kun", which contains fine Chinese zodiac animals. If a child belongs to something, just click a red dot on the animal sign. This red dot is called "Diannao". A beautiful dragon and phoenix or tiger head is placed in the middle of "completed", which is called dragon and phoenix becoming auspicious or tiger exorcising evil spirits. Give it to children, to relatives and friends who come to visit and celebrate, in order to avoid disaster. People in northern Shanxi often make flower steamed buns called "peaches", which are shaped like breasts and have red nipples. The steamed stuffed bun is decorated with various flowers and auspicious patterns. Peach was originally an exorcism in ancient customs, meaning "escape" and avoiding disaster. It is a metaphor of maternal characteristics in rural folk customs to make it breast-shaped to show maturity. When a child is one year old, he should also make a similar big flower bun or the zodiac. Modeling is clumsy or clever, elegant or vulgar, which varies from place to place.

The custom of wedding has always been a very grand life ceremony. As the saying goes, "it is better to get into a primary school than to get married." This is a custom in northern Shanxi. The bride and groom each eat a pair of "happy fish and lucky rabbits" on the morning of the party. A pair of face rabbits connected by red lines are placed at the top of the cave door to symbolize the Phnom Penh of the jade rabbit. In fact, the original intention of rabbit is tiger, and it is the protector of Han folk towns and houses to exorcise evil spirits. Wedding dough modeling must mention the "court food" in Xinzhou, Dingxiang, Yuanping and Daixian. Generally, three or five kilograms of white flour should be made into a pair. Most of the models are jade rabbits carrying peaches and goldfish carrying pomegranates. The above shapes are carefully carved with the Chinese zodiac, vivid and interesting, colorful, lively, line and surface, dot and block, plastic and painting, clumsy and clever.

It is a custom for the younger generation to celebrate their birthdays for people in their 60s. Congratulations on steaming beautiful big birthday peaches, wishing the old people a long and healthy life and expressing filial piety.

Religious teachings tell people that when everyone rushes through the road of life that they can perceive, the human soul will be immortal and sublimated to another world. Therefore, people make all kinds of funeral procedures extraordinarily grand and complicated. This is a kind of praise and affirmation of the meaning of life. The main pasta products in this activity are divided into "big products" and "small products" according to the distance. The big offerings made by direct descendants are also called steamed bread. The round ones are decorated with bright and simple petals and inserted with jujube flowers, which originated from the ancient custom of three sacrifices, while other relatives and friends worship small offerings similar to snake plates. In the area around Hongdao in Dingxiang, there are a series of dough figurines such as drama figures, gods and local officials. , will be molded and then decorated with colored paper. The difference is that the colors used in the description of the five senses are strange, and the eyes are not the finishing touch. Obviously, there is a difference in aesthetic structure between the sense of proportion and the enjoyment of human beings, which makes people feel a cold sadness in richness.

Face-dressing people generally appear in life ceremonies in the form of food, but they are endowed with cultural and religious significance, which makes them have compound value, thus becoming a material that can not be ignored in the study of Han folk culture.