Traditional Customs of Luoding

From the festival folklore, all the important festivals of the Han Chinese people, such as New Year's Day, Yuanxiao, Qingming, Dragon Boat Festival, Tanabata, Yu Lan, Mid-Autumn Festival, Chung Yeung, Winter Solstice, Xiaoyan Evening, New Year's Eve and so on, are also important and big festivals of Luoding, and the content and significance of the festivals are also more or less the same, and the differences are only in the way of expression and the content of life, which are formed by the form, the region, the people's conditions, and the habits of life, and so on. Of course, there are many variations in the inheritance.

Meng Lan Festival, also known as Zhongyuan Festival, is called "Ghost Festival" all over Lingnan, and Luoding is called "Ghost Festival". The festival is held on the 15th day of the 7th month, and the Buddhist sutra, "The Great Tibetan Scripture", says that Meilian's mother fell into the path of the starving ghosts, and the food in her mouth turned into charcoal, so Meilian asked Buddha for advice, and Buddha made the pellet, and put it on a plate with strange fruits and veggies to offer to the Buddha, and then Meilian's mother was able to get the food. In the north of the Zhongyuan Festival for several days, Buddhist temples are made Yu Lan Festival, folk hang money clothes and paper, prepare vegetarian food to ancestors. In Lingnan, the 14th day of the 7th month is celebrated as the Zhongyuan Festival. It is said that at the end of the Song Dynasty, when people were preparing for the festival, the Yuan soldiers suddenly invaded, so they had to make offerings to their ancestors one day earlier. Since then, people have been accustomed to celebrate the festival on July 14th. There is another story in Luoding: people originally celebrated the festival on July 15, this day, the Yao people are down from the mountains, snatch the sacrificial food sacrificed to the land of the field, so the festival was advanced by one day, so that the Yao people to pounce on, and from then on will be changed to July 14th, the Day of the Mid-Yuan Festival. On this day, in addition to ancestor worship, but also in the field, the corner of the house burning incense and paper clothes set up road sacrifices so that the lonely souls and ghosts to eat a meal, and to seek peace of mind, commonly known as "Shi Yu".

Northern rituals with cattle and sheep, Luo Ding rituals with chicken, the general family rituals with chicken, pork. Chicken should be whole, to be cooked, after the sacrifice chopped into small pieces, with seasonings, taste both beautiful and smooth, but also to maintain the original flavor of the chicken, commonly known as "white cut chicken". Because the chicken endowed with a grand meaning, in addition to rituals, guests also use chicken, so there is "no chicken feast" said.

The 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar is the Mid-Autumn Festival, and most of the places in Luoding celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival on the 15th day of the 8th month, but there are also many places that celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival on the 16th day of the 8th month or the 14th day of the 8th month. It is said that, because the ancestors to carry the bridge for a living (some avoid saying that the ancestors to carry the bridge, so say that the ancestors when the official sitting on the bridge), because the return home is very late, the family has opened the stage of sacrifice to the gods. And they did not have anything (offerings) ready, so they decided to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival on the 16th instead, which has been passed down to the present day in later generations. As for the 14th day of August, I don't know what the reason is for celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival. During the Mid-Autumn Festival, every family worships the moonlight, and the custom in the village is to invite the moonlight god, in which all the people in the village, big and small, old and young, sit around in the quiet of the night on the "earth hall", and one person performs the spell to invite the god, and it is said that the moonlight god can possess the body, and those who are possessed then play the role of the god of the moon, and they are generally mostly women, a little bit like the hypnotic magic in the West. In addition, fire lanterns (kongming lanterns) are set off in villages, and young and strong people in villages form teams to compete for the lanterns that land. There is no restriction on the terrain when grabbing the lanterns, so it is more spectacular than grabbing the firecrackers.

Yuanxiao Festival, the north is very grand. Yuanxiao Festival, also known as the Festival of Lights, on the Yuan Festival, commonly known as on the Yuan on the lights. Luo Ding custom, such as the family added a male, the next year on the second day of the first month on the lights, lanterns hanging in the village social altar tree, 16th down lights, down lights when the relatives came to congratulate, and watch the "grab spring lights", who grabbed the "spring lights" will be good luck.

The festival closely related to the New Year is the winter solstice. The winter solstice is one of the 24 solar terms in the summer calendar, in agricultural production is of great significance, due to the winter solstice sun to the Tropic of Capricorn, the northern hemisphere is the shortest day of the year, after the winter solstice, the daytime will be gradually lengthened, the weather is also back to ambiguous day by day, the so-called "summer solstice a yin, winter solstice, a yang," the weekly calendar to the winter solstice for the first month, the beginning of the year, the first day of the year is the first day of the year. The winter solstice is the first month of the weekly calendar, and it is the first day of the year. In Luo Ding people's mind, the winter solstice has the weight of the New Year, and even have "winter is greater than the year" proverb. Rural areas on the winter solstice is very important, families are held ancestral activities, and very solemn, avoiding the same with the New Year, like to discuss the auspicious.

In terms of marriage customs, Luoding generally have the custom of crying marriage, generally in the new day set, or half a month and a half, or three, five days ago, the girl to be married is no longer in the outdoors, stay at home all day, and invited the usual friendly sisters together, learn to sing the song of the wedding cry, most of the wedding cry in the marriage before the three days before the start of the wedding officially, the wedding cry, not only crying, but in the form of songs to cry. There are also different ways of crying. One is a rhyme without words, with the cry of the strength of the weak, long and short, fast and slow to create a rhythm, rhyme, between a few lines of lyrics, indicating that a to be married in that is difficult to leave the feelings, known as the "singing marriage", can show the feelings of strong, rocky and changeable, this crying marriage more happy than sad, often appear in the crying with a smile scene. Another is a real crying marriage. Crying marriage was originally a form of customary form, such as not crying not singing, but not in line with the "ritual" of the anomaly. General rural women, accustomed to the authoritarian nature of this marriage and regarded as a common practice, for the wedding neither happy, nor resentment, that the crying marriage is a must do before the wedding, and therefore step by step, in accordance with the mother's teachings passed down from generation to generation of singing, crying and fixed lyrics, must be sung for three days to sing the end of the song, commonly referred to as the "singing word eye". Words eye song have sung, but the bride for the future fate of ignorance, filled with misery, fear and uncertainty of the contradictory state of mind, and therefore whenever singing the wedding song can not help but show their true feelings, crying parents, crying brother and sister-in-law, crying sisters, crying neighbors, and even a hair and can not be stopped, crying dowry, crying on the bridge, sung to the feelings of difficult to contain, will be long and short sighs, so that the listener to sympathize with, and the * * * and cry with the same, so that would have been life! Celebration of great events of the lively scene, often by a cry to get and miserable. The third is the curse of marriage. Due to dissatisfaction with the arranged marriage and can not get rid of the inner accumulation of grief, resentment, pain expression, nowhere to complain, nowhere to vent, so they will be by crying marriage and vent. Scolding the way of marriage, but also an agreed custom, a girl to be married can have the right to choose the way of scolding the marriage, whether it is scolding parents, scolding brother and sister-in-law or scolding the matchmaker are unquestionable, the scolded can never express dissatisfaction, and even more can not return the favor, the more scolding of the evil, it is more auspicious. The custom of crying marriage, with the marriage of autonomy, enlightenment and the gradual extinction.

Marriage and funeral is known as red and white wedding, the wedding was originally happy but was made sad and sad, and the funeral was originally miserable and sad to express the feelings of grief, but was made hot, Roding's funeral customs like drums and music to open the way, blowing and blowing, funeral procession firecrackers, firecrackers burned the more, the more the more that the scenery of the big funeral, therefore, the funeral can be seen in the full ground paved with red.

"Three-year-old fixed marriage" is different from the custom of child brides, generally three-year-old child by both parents to change the post, will become a marriage, and thereafter, if the woman is not married to the first funeral, the male must be led back to the ancestral shrine for worship, and her grave by the male family descendants to sweep. If the man remarries after that, he can only be considered a stepchild.

Luoding customs are dominated by Han culture, but the countryside, the influence of ethnic minorities and alienated customs are still very prominent. Han Chinese women's status is generally low, the phenomenon of male superiority is very common. In Luoding rural areas, uncle's status and authority is greatly respected, the countryside is popular with "heaven Lei Gong, underground uncle" proverb. All nephews, no matter how big or small, uncle has the right to ask, such as nephew's marriage, family separation, divorce, parents' funeral, etc., uncle should be asked to participate, such as brother separation, the village patriarchs do not have the right to ask, but the uncle can preside over the umpire, the uncle's right to the phenomenon of the special importance of the matriarchal commune is obviously the matriarchal period, the mother's right to the remnants of the twists and turns of the reflection of the folklore of the ancient Baiyue, and to date, the Guangxi Zhuang people still retain the The Zhuang people of Guangxi still retain the remnants of the matrilineal clan commune in which the uncle's right is particularly important.

The "qi dashi" and "qi stone" are multi-god worship practices with strong primitive religious colors. The folk retain the primitive religious legacy of believing in witchcraft and ghosts, and blindly believing in multiple gods and chicken divination. In addition to worshipping their ancestors, people also worship a variety of self-created deities, such as boulders on the mountains, trees on the roadside, and even crawling insects and snakes, birds and beasts, and treacherous peaks, all of which can be sealed as they wish as spirits of different powers or effects, and sincerely worship them. There are also many taboos in daily life. In the countryside, when you have a child, you have to find a big tree or boulder to "get a deed", and all the big and small things related to your child, you have to burn incense to the "Deity Master" or "Deity Mother" to return to the gods. This "deed tree" or "deed stone" is the ancient Baiyue national legacy of multi-god worship practices, is a kind of primitive religious concepts passed down from generation to generation.