The significance of the Chinese New Year fire

In ancient times, there were some activities similar to the form of wanghuo, such as "Tingliao", "residue pots" and so on, which are considered to be the early wanghuo. Mainly used for ancestor worship, or in order to drive away evil spirits, and at that time most of the burning wood, burning charcoal:

"Han Yi" "Sui Shu" records, the national rituals, there is in the new year's day "Ting prao" provisions, the Spring and Autumn period, there is also Duke Huanqi Ting Prao to seek the virtuous story ("Han Shi Wai Zhuan"). In the Liang Dynasty of the Southern Dynasties, the record of folk prairie-launching began to appear in the "Jing Chu Yearly Records", with the purpose of driving away evil spirits and eliminating disasters. Song Chen Yuanliang (陈元靓), "The Record of the Years and Seasons" (岁时广记) records, "The Four Seasons of the Years and Seasons" (四时篡要): 'On New Year's Eve, firewood is accumulated in the court, and a prairie fire is started to avert disasters.'" [6] In the Ming Dynasty, there were records of ancestor and deity worship. Ming Zhou Rucheng, "Xichao music": "New Year's Eve, people sacrificed ancestors and all the gods, set up pine firewood Qi house, fire burning, called residue pot." [6]

There is more literature on wanghuo in the Qing Dynasty:

Pallets of wanghuo are usually carried out on New Year's Eve of the Spring Festival and the Lantern Festival. In front of the courtyard of every household, large pieces of coal were used to form a tower, which was called wanghuo, for good luck and to congratulate the prosperity of the whole year.

The origin of the stacks of fire

In 1738, Lang Shining painted a picture of "Hongli Snow Scene", painted for the New Year when the emperor and his children burned pine and cypress branches with a fire pit. This is called "burning pine pot". Shouyang County in the Qianlong period, "Shouyang County Records": "three days before and after the first yuan, neighborhoods and alleys, all in front of the door molded clay Maitreya, judges, lions and mallets and other samples, around the stone charcoal burned, overnight, known as the tower fire." (now also known as "tower fire") "Datong Fu Zhi" (thirty-three volumes - carved in the forty-seventh year of the Qing dynasty Qianlong): "'New Year's Day', base acetylene charcoal in the door, such as the shape of a floating map, called 'Wang Huo '." Daoguang years of "Zhao Cheng County Zhi" contains: "on the yuan blazing charcoal in the court, said Xingwang fire, sacrificed to the gods."

Transformation

The 1960s and 1970s, by the "Cultural Revolution" late in the "Four Olds" campaign, involving sacrifices, receiving the God of the prosperous fire is regarded as a superstitious activity, the old customs, in the government's advocacy of the "Four Olds" campaign, the government's advocacy of the "Four Olds" campaign. Under the government-sponsored "Destruction of the Four Olds" campaign, militia or village cadres began to prohibit villagers from building wangfires. Wanghuo was thus restricted. Until the early seventies, the belief in the divinity of Xiguan Dawanghuo was still very common. To the late seventies, with the widespread popularization of scientific and technological knowledge and penetration, people gradually "see through" the "sky" of the ability of the folk on the fire of the sacred beliefs began to waver, as a holiday celebration of the symbolic significance of the strengthening.

Around the 1980s of the twentieth century, a new climax of China's economic development, but also a climax of the development of the coal industry. The technology of base wanghuo underwent a major change, and the core technological reform was manifested in the introduction of the hitching technology. Subsequently, with the continuous development of the economy, the size of the fire gradually by the use of small pieces of charcoal base a foot high, the development of more than ten meters twenty meters, the coal required a few tons or even more than a dozen tons.