What are the unique customs and cultural features of Chenzhou? What is their relationship with Chenzhou’s geographical environment and history?

Chenzhou City is located in the southeast of Hunan Province, at the intersection of the middle section of the Nanling Mountains and the southern section of the Luoxiao Mountains. It borders Ganzhou City in Jiangxi Province to the east, Shaoguan City and Qingyuan City of Guangdong Province to the south, and Yongzhou to the west. City, north of Hengyang City and Zhuzhou City, 350 kilometers away from the provincial capital Changsha City. Since ancient times, Chenzhou has enjoyed many reputations, such as "China's Excellent Tourism City", "China's Home of Hot Springs", "Chinese Folk Songs", "Chinese Poetry", etc. At the same time, as the "back garden of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao", Chenzhou The economy is developing very rapidly. However, in my opinion, the most attractive thing about my hometown, Chenzhou, is not how beautiful it is, how developed its economy is, or how many tourist attractions it has. The most distinctive thing about it is that it has many unique folk customs. , extremely impressive. Folk customs, that is, folk customs, refer to the life culture created, enjoyed and inherited by the majority of people in a country or nation. It originated from the needs of human social group life, and continues to form, expand and evolve in specific nations, eras and regions to serve people's daily lives. Folk custom is such a basic force that comes from the people, is inherited by the people, regulates the people, and is deeply hidden in the people's behavior, language and psychology. As a multi-ethnic area, Chenzhou has Manchu, Miao, Hui, Mongolian, She, Tong, Hani, Tujia, Dong, Yi, Zhuang, Tibetan, Uyghur, Yao, Buyi, Dai, Li, Gaoshan, Kirgiz, Mulao, and Gelao There are 25 ethnic minorities including Tu, Bai, Naxi and Korean, among which the Yao population is more than 80,000, accounting for 2.02% of the total population. Chenzhou has formed unique folk culture and traditional customs during its long historical development. Chenzhou has a profound folk culture, outstanding regional characteristics, and a rich and simple local flavor. Chenzhou's traditional folk customs are extremely rich, including the Anren Branch, the Spring Festival of the Yao people, the Yao Reunion Festival, the Panwang Festival of the Yao people, the weeping at the wedding, and the fairings all over the countryside. People who have personally experienced the folk customs will have a good understanding of the folk customs. He was full of praise. Below I will select some important and profound folk customs from the many folk customs in my hometown to briefly introduce them to you. Anrenqian Branch Anrenqian Branch started in the Song Dynasty. It is a folk event handed down to commemorate Yan Emperor Shennong. It is a unique folk festival in the country. According to legend, Emperor Yan Shennong brought eight followers to Anren to taste various herbs, cure various diseases, and teach the people about farming. In order to commemorate Shennong and other nine immortals, later generations built a nunnery on the stone mountain of Lengshui in Haoshan Mountain and named it "Jiulong Nunnery". lake". In the late Tang Dynasty, a temple was built on the other side of the confluence of Yiyang River and Yongle River, with beautiful mountains and clear waters, and the elegant fragrant lawn, for people to worship the Shennong family. People had a custom of "selecting a commune day to offer sacrifices to the gods to pray for good harvests." There was an endless stream of people selling incense candles and paper money at first, and then trading herbs, rattan ropes, hoe handles, bamboo hats, etc. The scale became larger and larger, and gradually developed into the trading of agricultural, sideline and local products. In the fifth year of Emperor Xianping's reign in the Song Dynasty, he moved to this county and established the annual "Spring Equinox" and "Spring Society" (12 months in a year. The lunar calendar is divided into 24 solar terms, with a section of about 15 days. Choose the three days before and three days after the Spring Equinox. Sacrificial activities are held on Tianweishe Day, also known as Chunshe, commonly known as "rushing branch") Festival in Nanmenzhou, the county seat, "rushing branch", each rushing branch lasts for 7 to 10 days, among which herbal medicine is the most distinctive. Every year around the Spring Equinox of the lunar calendar, people from all over the country gather in Anren County to worship Emperor Yan and trade in Chinese herbal medicines, grain seeds, agricultural tools, agricultural and sideline products, bamboo and wooden utensils and other commodities. While rushing to the branch, the herbal medicine market was filled with nearly a thousand kinds of Chinese herbal medicines collected from all over the country and even Southeast Asian countries, covering hundreds of families. Pharmacists from nearly 100 counties in more than 10 provinces and cities, including Hunan, Hubei, Guangdong, Guangxi, Jiangxi, Henan, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia, come to Anren every year to "rush to the branch" and collect and distribute more than 10,000 tons of herbal medicines on the market. People prepare the herbal medicines and bring them back. Supplemented by braised pig's feet, and then going to the fields to cultivate, it not only strengthens the body and bones, but also dispels cold and diseases. It is still used today. In recent years, the local government has used "branch offices" as a platform to perform economic and trade activities, "to develop a thousand-year medicine market and attract merchants from all over the world", which has given full vitality to the traditional custom of rushing to branch offices. The Yao people celebrate the Spring Festival. The Yao people celebrate the Spring Festival, which is a festival commemorating the spring plowing of the Yao people. Every year on the 11th day of the third lunar month, Yao people hold green leaves and branches, beat gongs and drums, and gather at Panwang Temple to hold spring festivals, worship the mountains and the earth, and pray for good weather and good harvests. Yao Nationality Reunion Festival The Yao Nationality Reunion Festival commemorates the day when six men and six women, the ancestors of the Yao nationality, got married and reunited. Every year on the 15th day of the seventh lunar month, the Yao people celebrate by killing animals and are full of joy. At night, gongs and drums are played, bonfires are burned outside the village, fire dragons and fire lions are danced, and people sing and dance around the hall until late at night or even until dawn. The Panwang Festival of the Yao people The Panwang Festival of the Yao people is the most solemn and sacred traditional festival of the Yao people. Starting from the 16th day of the 10th month of the lunar calendar, the Yao people held a sacrificial activity to "repay Panwang's wishes" in Panwang Temple, which lasted for 7 days and 7 nights or 5 days and 5 nights. During the festival, there are not only solemn sacrificial activities, but also entertainment activities such as chanting, singing, chanting, singing, dancing, performances, dialogues, joking, and singing duets with guests.

Weeping while getting married. Weeping while getting married is a long-standing wedding custom that was popular in rural areas of the city in the old days. Accompanying marriage and crying marriage have different names in different areas of Chenzhou. In Jiahe County, it is called "Zi Ge Tang", in Guiyang County, it is called "Zuo Hua Yan", and in Suxian District, it is called "Zi Hua Yuan". Songs sung to accompany weddings are called "songs to accompany weddings" in Jiahe County and "Singing Empress" in Guiyang County.

The song sung for crying weddings is called "Crying Marriage Song" in Jiahe County and "Crying Wedding Song" in Rucheng County. Although the names are inconsistent, the content is generally the same. The lyrics are about a married girl crying about the kindness of her parents in raising her, crying about the separation between the girls and sisters who were married, and more importantly, they express their dissatisfaction with the feudal marriage system and their dissatisfaction with the feudal marriage system. The longing for a happy marriage. The melody of the wedding songs is simple and concise, with beautiful melody and strong sense of rhythm. There is no instrumental accompaniment during singing, and the singing forms include solo singing, chorus singing, duet singing, rotation singing, singing while talking, singing while dancing, crying singing, scolding singing, etc. Going to the fairgrounds: Chenzhou has had the custom of going to the fairgrounds since ancient times. Since the Ming Dynasty, Chenzhou folk have set up fairs (bazaars) at the intersection of water and land and around towns to conduct commodity transactions. The trading date may be "Monday, Thursday, July" or "March, May, August" or "March, June, September", depending on the customs in various places, and it has been followed to this day. For example, in our town, we go to the fair on the first, fourth and seventh of every month. There are a variety of products on the polder for citizens to choose from, which provides great convenience to surrounding citizens. Every time we go to the fair, it is very lively! And with the reform and opening up and the development of the socialist market economic system, trade activities in the polders have become increasingly active, becoming a main channel for the circulation of rural commodities in the city, forming a number of large polders that are well-known throughout the southern Hunan region and even the province and the country, such as Jiahe The polder of Tangcun Town in County, the polder of Matian Town of Yongxing County, the polder of Liangtian Town of Suxian District, etc. Yizhang Night Story Yizhang Night Story is a traditional folk cultural activity with a long history. Every Spring Festival, from the first to the fifteenth day of the Lunar New Year, during the Lantern Festival, people may act as a single family, or as a group of families, or as a group or unit to perform night stories. During the "Story" exhibition, torches were lit, firecrackers roared, gongs and drums roared, and crowds of spectators crowded the streets. Since the "Story" activity takes place at night, "Night Story" gets its name from this. In 1995, the Provincial Department of Culture awarded Chengguan Town of Yizhang County as the "Hometown of Night Story Art". The Linwu Nuo Opera, which the locals call the "Sacred Lion", is a way for people to pursue a better life. The wish for a better life is mainly prayed for through village, family or individual petitions and vows.

This kind of expression of prayer became popular in the form of "Nuo opera", which entertains gods and people. It was passed down orally and passed down from generation to generation. Nuo opera was formed during the Chenghua period of the Ming Dynasty and gradually recovered in the early 1980s. It is only performed in the first month of the year, and the venue is outdoors and not fixed. During the performance of Nuo opera, Buddhism, Taoism and Confucian culture are intertwined and infiltrated, which has a rich and mysterious cultural color of Chu and Wu and precious artistic value. It is called "the source of dramatic art" and "living fossil of Chinese drama". In order to write this paper, I collected a lot of information and called some elderly people and friends in my hometown. As a result, I learned a lot about the unique folk customs of my hometown that I had never heard of before, and I felt a sense of pride in my heart. I feel proud that my hometown has such a long cultural tradition and diverse folk customs. A sentence I like very much is "Every word, deed, or even thought a person has in life is inseparable from the land where he lives. A person has the same flavor as his fellow countrymen." From this sentence, we can deeply understand the power of folk customs. I believe that the folk customs of each place have a great impact on the people who grow up on that land.

I think that in the future life, I must learn more about the folk customs of my hometown. At the same time, I must introduce the folk customs of our hometown to other people so that the culture can be passed down from generation to generation!