The national characteristics of Nanning gifts

As a nation, the most important basic feature of the Zhuang people is that they have their own common language - Zhuang language. Zhuang language is a beautiful language with a long history. It was created by the Zhuang people in their common life, production and struggle for thousands of years. Due to long-term interactions with the Han people, the Zhuang language has continuously absorbed Chinese terms to enrich itself. However, the Zhuang people know how to cherish and protect their own language, so the Zhuang language has its own characteristics in terms of basic vocabulary and basic grammar. The Zhuang nationality later spread to many places in the southwest, and their languages ??are all similar, with little change in root vocabulary.

On the basis of concentrating on the folk literature, music, dance and skills of their own nation, the Zhuang people created their own drama - Zhuang Opera. The bronze drum is the most representative folk instrument of the Zhuang people.

The Zhuang people are good at singing, and they hold regular folk song gatherings every year, called Gewei. The third day of the third lunar month is the most solemn. Large song fairs have more than ten thousand people participating. Liu Sanjie, known as the Singer Fairy, is a typical representative of Zhuang singers. During the song fair, entertainment activities such as throwing embroidered balls and banging eggs were held between men and women, eating five-color glutinous rice, singing Zhuang opera, and organizing material exchanges to wish for a good harvest. The Zhuang people already had dance in the Tang Dynasty. Numerous cliff murals painted by Zhuang ancestors have been left on the cliffs in Ningming, Longzhou and other places in Guangxi. The casting and use of bronze drums has a history of more than 2,000 years among the Zhuang people. Zhuang brocade is a famous textile handicraft.

Traditional Song Festival of Zhuang Nationality. It is also called "March 3", "Gexu Festival", Gewei, and in Zhuang language it is called "Wobupo" and "Shuanglongdong". It means a song sung in the fields or outside caves. It is divided into Rige Fair and Night Ge Fair. The Rige Fair is in the wild, and its main content is to choose a match based on the songs; the Night Ge Fair is in the village, and it mainly sings production songs, seasonal songs, pan songs and historical songs. In addition to the third day of the third month of the lunar calendar, song fairs can be formed during the Spring Festival, the eighth day of April, the Mid-Autumn Festival, the Mid-Autumn Festival, weddings, children's full moon, housewarming and other seasons. Even when the singers meet their rivals on the way to the fair, a temporary fair can be formed. There are many legends about its origin. One is that Liu Sanjie invented folk songs, and people rushed to sing them and gradually developed into a song fair; another is that it was to entertain the gods and eliminate disasters and epidemics; another is to commemorate a loyal couple. Before the Song Fair Festival, people prepare five-color rice and colored eggs, and girls rush to make hydrangeas. On Song Fair Day, young men and women all wear festive costumes, men carry gifts and women carry hydrangeas, and go in groups. Some carried the statue of Sister Liu around the song fair for a week before starting to sing in antiphonal style. In some cases, the girls set up a colorful embroidery booth, and when the young men arrive, they sing to each other and evaluate each other's character and talent. In some cases, men and women compete. The girl throws a hydrangea to the person she likes. If the person likes it, he will tie a gift on the hydrangea and throw it back to the woman. Some song fairs have the custom of touching eggs: the young man touches the colored egg in the girl's hand with the colored egg in her hand. If the girl wants to be friends with him, she will reveal half of her egg for him to touch. If she doesn't want to, she will hold the whole egg. There are also cases where Village A sends colored balls to Village B, and when they meet to return the balls, they hold a folk song competition. If Village B loses, the colored balls are not allowed to be returned, and the competition will continue next year until they win the song. Now, the government of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region has designated the third day of the third lunar month as the Zhuang Song Festival, which has gradually developed into the "March 3" Cultural and Art Festival.

In areas where the Zhuang people in Guangxi live together, in addition to Taoism and Buddhism, there is also a popular religion called "Meishan Religion" (or "Sanyuan Religion" or "Shijiao"). The primitive religion respects Tang Daoxiang, Ge Dingzhi and Zhou Huzheng as its ancestors. It is a polytheistic belief and is a sect formed by mixing local shamanism, Taoism and ancient Nuo rituals. The traditional customs of the Zhuang people include praying for rain when there is a drought, rewarding the gods with a good harvest, exorcising ghosts and epidemics, or preparing for funerals. It is necessary to ask the "Meishan Sect" master (called "Gongsie" in Zhuang language, that is, a wizard) to preside over a grand sacrificial ceremony. The names of this ceremony vary from place to place, including "Dajiao", "Zhaozhai", "Gusie" (Zhuang transliteration, meaning to be a teacher), "Tiaomang Temple" (Zhuang transliteration, meaning the God of the Temple Jump). , "Tiaosi" (a homophone of "Tiao Shi"), "Singer" and other titles. During the sacrificial ceremony, in addition to performing witchcraft activities such as chanting incantations, divination, inviting gods, and exorcising ghosts, the master mainly wore masks and danced to the gods. They also sang the legends and stories of various gods. The various divine dances performed by the master were called "Shigong Dance" by the masses.