Customs and culture of small towns in Zhai Ying

Zhai Ying has a history of more than 600 years. At the beginning of the establishment of the Ming regime, Zhu Zhen, Ming Taizu, at the behest of his father, led troops into the remote Wuling mountain area to expand the territory and pacify the people. He took the lead all the way and went through hardships to reach Zhai Ying. He took a fancy to this land of geomantic omen, so he ordered the soldiers to camp, build castles and repair fortifications. After the local Miao rebellion was put down, we took advantage of the direct access from Zhaiyingshui Road to Dongting, and began to cultivate people, open commercial ports, build schools and start businesses in Zhai Ying and its surrounding areas. Shortly thereafter, the families of the garrison arrived one after another, and businessmen from all over the country flocked, and Buddhist activities flourished. Zhai Ying quickly developed into the largest military and economic town in the mountainous area of Fan Jing, and became an important commercial distribution center in eastern Guizhou. Economic prosperity has promoted the development of culture. Businessmen brought Michael Chen Opera, Yangxi Opera and Sichuan Opera, which merged with the local Camellia Lantern and evolved into Zhai Ying Lantern with far-reaching charm. The perfect combination of dragon culture in the Central Plains and local dragon culture has greatly improved the artistic level of dragon rolling in Zhai Ying, and gradually formed a dragon rolling culture in Zhai Ying, which integrates textile, embroidery, sculpture, paper-cutting, calligraphy, fine arts, dance, stunts and speeches.

The art of dragon rolling in the ancient town of Zhai Ying is unique, with unique conception, perfect modeling, exquisite craftsmanship and rich national culture. The rolling dragon is 36 meters long and is divided into 17 sections (also known as holes). It consists of 34 people dancing in turn, 9 bamboo sticks with thick thumbs connected to the keel, and 500 bamboo sticks with a diameter of about 60 cm arranged at equal intervals to form the dragon body. Then, the whole silk cloth is painted with spotted scales and covered with bamboo sticks. The faucet is made of thick bamboo, fixed on the dragon frame, covered with special fireproof cloth and painted. The dragon body is oily and radiant, and it looks like a real dragon from a distance. Because the Ming army was stationed in Zhai Ying for a long time, they were very familiar with Zhai Ying's superb performance skills. During the years of Yongle, Jiajing, Wanli, Qingganlong and Jiaqing in Ming Dynasty, he was called to perform in Beijing many times. Emperor Qianlong once gave his pen pal a "dragon" as a reward. In the early years of the Republic of China, Zhai Ying once organized a grand Dragon Lantern Festival. In order to show off their style, wealthy businessmen took the lead in donating money and rented three big boats to Suzhou and Hangzhou via Dongting to buy musical instruments and lighting materials. During the Lantern Festival, thousands of invitations were distributed to Songtao, Jiangkou, Tongren, Fenghuang, Mayang, Jishou and Huayuan, and dragon dance activities were all over Wuling Mountain.

Since the reform and opening up, the knitting technology has been promoted to a new height on the basis of tradition in order to launch the brand of Zhai Ying Gunlong. Artists are determined to innovate, learn from others' strengths, organically combine traditional technology with modern electronic technology, replace oil with low-voltage light bulbs, and install colored lights on dragons; Powered by a small horse, the dragon's mouth automatically closes and its eyelids flicker, making it emit sparkling blue light, more energetic and spiritual, more vivid and magical. In the performance action, we abandoned the traditional dance method of rambling and disorder, and designed dozens of novel roll dance actions, all of which gave it certain connotation. The common roll dance moves are: dragon out of the hole, crossing the river to plunge into the sea, dragon playing with beads, dragon rolling, inversion of Gankun, dragon crossing the river, dragon playing with water, dragon crossing the mountain, dragon meditating, dragon grabbing treasure, wing flying and dragonfly. In addition, the dragon plate can be made into many glyphs and figures, such as "Dragon", "Spring", "China", Olympic symbols "Five Rings", "Lotus" and various year numbers.

Since 1996, Zhai Ying Gunlong has walked out of the mountain gate many times and participated in various large-scale celebrations and festivals organized by provinces, prefectures and counties. 1999, Guizhou Culture and Art Troupe invited Zhai Ying to perform the Dragon Rolling; 200 1, 1 1, CCTV made a special trip to Zhai Ying to shoot the art of rolling dragons, and put it on the special program of the 2002 Spring Festival. 65438+February, Guizhou Satellite TV's "Walking through Parks and Provinces" column broadcasted Zhai Ying Rolling Dragon; In 2002, it was put on the screen by CCTV's seventh set of "Country World" and Guangzhou TV's "Walking Around Guizhou" as special programs and tourist programs for the Spring Festival. In the Spring Festival of 2003, CCTV 1 and 7 reported Zhai Ying Rolling Dragon many times and played wonderful pictures of it. On May 1 2004, Guizhou Satellite TV made a special report on the ancient town of Zhai Ying and Gunlong in Zhai Ying. On the Lantern Festival in 2005, the first, second and seventh sets of the Central Committee and Guizhou Satellite TV reported on the "Rolling Dragons to Create Spring" held in the ancient town of Zhai Ying that year. In 2006, the colorful Guizhou column of Guizhou Satellite TV introduced Zhai Ying Gunlong twice in the form of special lectures.