The history and culture of Jiahe County

Jiahe folk songs are of various varieties and rich in content. There are wedding songs that are well-known to every household, including women and children; there are love songs, labor songs, life songs, and children's songs with fresh, bright and high-pitched tunes; there are current political songs and historical legend songs that curb evil and promote good, and inspire revolutionary fighting spirit; there are humorous, There are warm and cheerful minor tunes, lantern tunes; there are warm and festive, deep and sad festive tunes, ritual songs and so on. As of the end of 2013, 2,369 folk songs have been collected and compiled, but the most distinctive one is Jiahe’s wedding song.

Jiahe Wedding Song is a kind of farewell activity in which female companions accompany married girls to express their emotions through singing. The most prominent part is that it focuses on the bride getting married, pouring out their parting emotions, and expresses their feelings about feudal marriage. System, ethics and moral resentment, anger and resistance are the main ones. The wedding songs in Jiahe folk songs not only have a long history, are numerous, and have unique personalities and styles, but also contain profound historical connotations, with realism and romanticism. According to incomplete statistics, there are more than 1,300 Jiahe wedding songs that are still passed down orally, accounting for nearly 60% of the total number of folk songs and ballads that have been collected.

In 1993, Jiahe County was named the "Hometown of Folk Songs" by the Hunan Provincial Department of Culture. Today, Jiahe folk songs have become an indispensable business card that showcases Jiahe’s unique regional culture. Birthday customs: Jiahe people usually celebrate their birthdays not on their birthdays, but on the Spring Festival. When their parents reach the age of 60, their children must celebrate their parents' birthdays, and they will celebrate their birthdays every 10 years thereafter. The 60th birthday celebration is called the first celebration of sixtieth birthday. The 70th and 80th birthday celebrations are called the 70th and 80th birthdays respectively, also known as the Seventh Rank and the Eighth Rank Rongqing. If parents or grandparents are of the same age, they are said to have double longevity. Relatives and friends come to celebrate birthdays, and the gifts generally do not include money, but birthday banners, couplets, birthday wine, cakes, dried fruits, fruits, etc. For those who are sophisticated, a birthday box is given, which contains steamed buns, pastries, birthday noodles, birthday candles, birthday peaches, etc., which is called a birthday plate. The numbers in the longevity chart are usually in pairs for good luck. Now I am sending you a cake.

When celebrating birthdays, it is important to set up longevity halls. The decorations in the longevity hall are usually pictures of longevity stars or pines and cypresses hanging in the middle, and longevity couplets hung on both sides of the middle hall. store) to order. Most of them use ready-made words of praise. There is an offering table in front of the longevity hall, with longevity candles lit on it. Silk curtains are hung on both sides. The middle silk curtain is pasted with the word "Shou" or "Shoubi Nanshan" cut out of gold paper. A birthday feast is held when celebrating a birthday. One snack is longevity peaches made from rice flour or flour. Instead of eating rice, they eat noodles, which are called "longevity noodles". If parents die before their birthday or under the age of 60, wealthy families often celebrate their birthdays on their parents’ birthdays, and then every 10 years. Wedding Customs In the past, when village girls from Jiaheshan Village got married, the most important thing they paid attention to was their wedding shoes. The girl from whose family makes more wedding shoes and does well will be praised by everyone. The girl and the boy were engaged, and the wedding was approaching, so the girl was busy making wedding shoes. The girl was shy when she first made wedding shoes and avoided people while making them. Hiding in the attic, he sang a love song while making shoes: "Brother Qing lives on a steep rock wall, with a high mountain and a road far apart. I went over the mountains and ridges to see my sister, and walked out on the grassy slopes to the main road. I made a pair of shoes for Brother Qing, with fine needles. The thread is long, and the thread is connected to Lang's body. "The happy scene is written on the eyebrows and on the face. Later, the custom changed, not only for the groom, but also for the parents, brothers and sisters of the Lang family, and even for the nieces and nephews. There were so many wedding shoes that one person couldn't do it, so helpers were hired. The female companions came, and everyone sat together. The three women sang gongs in front of each other. Needless to say, the target of the banter is naturally the married woman. The bride blamed this and scolded that, but her heart felt sweeter than drinking mountain honey. The atmosphere was so joyful, and the loud laughter filled the room and the entire farmhouse. Lantern Festival Customs In Jiahe rural area, during the Lantern Festival, people have the custom of dancing grass dragons and playing radish lanterns. The grass dragon, also known as the grass dragon, is made of grass; the radish dragon lantern is a dragon lantern made by pasting a large radish with colored paper and inserting a few lit incense sticks. People regard the grass dragon dance and the carrot lantern as a good omen. When the lanterns of grass dragons and radish dragons come to the house during the Lantern Festival, the host will set off firecrackers to welcome them and burn incense to pray. It is said that a house where the radish dragon lights up its head will have a bumper harvest in the new year; a house where the grass dragon kowtows its head will have a prosperous new year. Jiahe’s food culture is unique and has the reputation of “the whole country eats in Guangzhou, and Hunan eats in Jiahe”. A large number of classic Jiahe dishes such as ginger-blood duck, blood enema, fried meat, boiled meat, and whole pig feast are famous both inside and outside the province.

Jiahe’s local products have long enjoyed a high reputation.

Jiahe's "three-flavor pepper", famous for its "sweet mouth, spicy body and fragrant body", has been included in the national agricultural comprehensive development diversified business projects and has formed an industrialized operation. The "Chopped Pepper" and "King of Fermented Bean Curd" produced in the county won the silver medal and gold medal respectively at the second and third International Agricultural Expo; the Jiajin brand tea oil, famous for its "clear, fragrant and pure" fragrance, is popular in various places in Central and South China. Province; as a national commodity lean pig production base county, lean pigs sell well in the Hong Kong and Macao markets, and the comprehensive breeding technology won the Agricultural Harvest Project Award of the Ministry of Agriculture; the "Shennong Brand" high-quality tobacco brand won the National Tobacco Monopoly Administration, China Tobacco The "Golden Leaf" medal issued by the head office.