Introducing the Yugu Essay

The Yugu people live in the Sunan area of the Hexi Corridor in Gansu Province, and the rest live in the Huangnibao area of Jiuquan. According to the distribution area, the Yugu people use three languages: the Altaic language family Turkic language group of Yaohuer language, Altaic language family Mongolian language group of Engel language and Chinese. There is no native script, and Chinese is generally spoken. Because of the loss of their own words, folk oral creation has become the main form of Yugu national art.

The Yugu people are an ethnic group mainly engaged in animal husbandry. In the past, they not only lived in felt tents, wore clothes, shoes and socks, and ate meat and milk which were animal products, but also most of the utensils used in production and life were made of fur. Now, there has been a part of the people changed to mainly engaged in agricultural production. The Yugur people mainly believe in Lamaism Gelu sect (Yellow religion).

Customs

The Yugu people are sincere and naive in their hospitality, hate falsehoods, and according to the guest's identity, social status and relationship with the host family, the meat is divided into first-class, second-class, and slaughtering a goat*** is divided into twelve classes. Measure people to give gifts, can be taken away by the guests. Folk tradition has the habit of first toast tea and then toast. In the hunting season, the Yugur people also have a picnic to treat guests of habit. Yugur people after death, cremation, earth burial, sky burial three funeral forms.

Wedding customs

Organize a wedding, the first day by the woman's family to do milk tea and hand-meat hospitality, the second and third days is the climax of the wedding feast, to be slaughtered by the male family cattle, sheep, organized banquets, banquets. Marriage is monogamous, and intermarriage between people of the same family name is strictly prohibited.

Food customs

Milk and tea in the Yugu people's daily life occupies a very important position, the folk have a day of three tea and rice or two tea and rice habit, every morning after getting up, generally the first clean water or just open the pot of tea scooped a spoonful of tea sprinkled around the tent, means that a new day has begun, and then mixed into the ghee, salt, and fresh milk can be consumed after repeated stirring. If you add ghee, milk skin, Qu La (milk lumps), fried noodles, red dates or dates can be used as breakfast. Tea is also served at noon, and in the evening, only after all the labor is over, does the formal meal begin.

Yugu people usually like to eat beef, mutton, usually made of beef, mutton hand-meat, whole sheep, cattle, sheep back son (i.e., complete cattle, sheep hip tip with bone cooked on the table), stewed mutton strips, air-dried dried mutton, beef, mutton soup, etc.. In addition to beef and mutton, also eat pork, camel meat, chicken or fried vegetables. Eating beef, sheep often accompanied by garlic, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar and so on. Due to natural conditions, herdsmen usually eat very little fresh vegetables, can only collect some wild onions, sand onions, wild garlic, wild leeks and ground roll skin (similar to fungus) and other wild vegetables. Fresh mushrooms are available everywhere on the grassland in the fall, so fresh mushrooms are commonly eaten after the fall.

Yugu milk food is mainly made of yak, cow and goat milk, and there are sweet milk, sour milk, milk skin, ghee and quila. The Yugu also like to add some ferns, raisins and red dates in rice and porridge, mixed with sugar and ghee, or add some diced mutton and yogurt within millet and yellow rice as their staple food.

Yugu people usually also like to make flour into noodles, fried cakes, buns, etc., the most skillful is to eat dumplings. In the happy days or guests to, Yugur families have to come up with the best food to celebrate and hospitality, hospitality and festivals, the most elaborate, the best dishes are cattle, sheep back and whole sheep. Among them, the roasted whole sheep is the most characteristic.

Cutting the mane

The traditional agricultural rituals of the Yugu people, popular in the area of Su'nan in Gansu Province, are usually held on a certain day within a few days after the 11th day of the fourth month of the lunar calendar every year. The Yugu people love their livestock so much that when a foal reaches one year of age, a grand first mane-cutting ceremony is held.

Fire to drive away the evil spirits

Yugu people's ancient religious customs, held every year before the Spring Festival New Year's Eve. New Year's Eve, Yugu families to clean the tent (or house) inside and outside, and then in the open space outside the door lit two piles of fire, firecrackers, while driving livestock from the middle of the two piles of fire through. From New Year's Eve to the fifth day of the first month, tents and corrals inside and outside the ghee lamps should be hung, bright all night. In this way, the evil spirits will not dare to approach the animals and people to ensure peace.