Recently, at the traditional "New Year Festival" held in The Union Village of Kangqian Street, Deqing County, Huzhou City, Zhejiang Province, the villagers performed a dragon dance to welcome the New Year. Photo by Xie Shangguo
Deqing County, Huzhou City, is located in the north of Zhejiang Province, looking east of Shanghai, south of Hangzhou, north of Taihu Lake, west of Tianmu Mountain foothills, in the hinterland of the Yangtze River Delta.
A few days ago, Shuangyan Village, Wuyang Street, Deqing County, held a rural folk culture festival of "Searching for Homesickness and Seeking The Taste of the New Year," and welcomed the arrival of the New Year festival through folk activities with rural characteristics, such as playing rice cakes, making dumplings, pinching dumplings, and writing Spring Festival. And every household in the county's new town is also playing rice cakes in a hot way. It is reported that as a traditional gift for the Deqing people to send relatives to relatives in the New Year, the rice cake takes the sound of "nian gao" and has a "good mouth" to bless relatives and friends to ascend every year.
In the mountainous areas of western Deqing, the slaughtering of the New Year pig is an important event in the ultimate year of the farmer, quite exquisite, and there are many rules: the more the pig is slaughtered, the brighter and more brittle the cry of the pig is, the more it indicates the auspiciousness of the coming year; when killing the pig, it is necessary to have a clean and neat knife result, which means that everything will be smooth in the next year of the farmer; the more the blood of the pig in the year is gushing, the brighter it is, the more bright and red, it indicates that the farm is prosperous and so on. This is the beautiful wish of the people in the mountains for the smooth and smooth business of the farming family.
Villagers in Moganshan Town, Deqing County, told the China City Daily reporter that every New Year's Day, the "Hercules" in the village competed with the selected Nian pigs, tied the Nian pigs with a moso bamboo and two ropes, and then pulled them to the slaughtering platform. Along the way, many villagers accompanied each other, and everyone busily crossed the village road, sprinkling the joy of harvest throughout the village. After cleaning up the Pigs, the villagers pulled out a large iron pot, put it on a large stove, used dead trees and moso bamboo from the mountains to make firewood, and then lit a stove to cook vegetables. At the same time, the villagers will mix the new late rice of the year with a small amount of glutinous rice and wash it, and add the water from the perfume well to make fragrant and sticky white rice. After a table of Pig Rice is ready, relatives and friends sit together, and tourists from afar also participate in it to enjoy a happy and lively reunion moment.
As another characteristic annual cultural activity in Deqing County, the Qianlong Lantern Festival in northern Zhejiang has also attracted wide attention.
According to the Records of Deqing County, the folk dragon dance customs of Deqing have been extremely popular since the Southern Song Dynasty. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the dragon lanterns in Deqing City will be more lively - every year from the thirteenth day of the first month to the eighteenth day of the first month, the villagers make dragon lanterns, horse lanterns, lion fish lamps, flower basket lamps and other paper lamps gathered in the city, competing for glory, and brilliant fireworks, noisy crowds, setting off the joy and peace of the lanterns in the first month.
Since 2000, in order to promote traditional culture, the Deqing County government has decided to hold the Zhejiang Northern Qianlong Lantern Festival during the annual Lantern Festival, which has been successfully held for 21 sessions so far. The annual Northern Zhejiang Qianlong Lantern Festival focuses on the traditional Lantern Festival, holds an opening ceremony on the 13th of the first month, and arranges large-scale themed lantern exhibitions and self-made lanterns by the masses and students in the main streets and alleys under the jurisdiction of Deqing, and at the same time, it also holds literary and artistic performances, Yue opera special sessions, calligraphy and painting exhibitions, guessing lantern riddles, Lantern Temple Fairs and other activities.
In 2009, the Qianlong Lantern in Northern Zhejiang province will be included in the representative project of intangible cultural heritage of Zhejiang Province, and in 2013, it was selected into the list of "Beautiful Intangible Cultural Heritage, Zhejiang New Year Customs" in Zhejiang Province. It is understood that during the Lantern Festival in 2022, Deqing County will continue to hold the 22nd Zhejiang Northern Qianlong Lantern Festival, and hold a series of activities such as the opening ceremony, dragon dance performance, street lantern exhibition, and annual custom market through the combination of online and offline methods.
Reporter: Juanhua Hu