For the people of the Dong ethnic minority, around the winter solstice each year, it is a festival to celebrate the harvest, eat winter and offer sacrifices to their ancestors, which is also known as the "Year of the Dong". It is also called "Dong New Year".
In Dong language, Dong New Year is called "Ning Gan". For Dong people, Dong Nian means "Winter Festival". As a farming nation, Dong people pay great attention to the season, and "Winter Festival" is an annual winter festival in Dong area. The "Dong New Year" is a later name. In a few areas, the Dong Winter Festival is as lively as the Chinese Spring Festival.
The "Winter Festival" of Dong nationality evolved from "Eating Jelly", so it is also called "Eating Winter Festival". "Eating jelly" is mainly eating "fish jelly", which can only be made in winter when the temperature gets cold.
The ancestors of the Dong people made their living by fishing and hunting, and had a passion for fish. The Dong people can't celebrate any festival without fish. Every year before and after the winter festival, the Dong people will catch fat carp in their own fishponds, cook the fish in sour soup, and then freeze them the next day when the soup cools down, turning them into tasty "fish jelly". On the day of the festival, the frozen fish will be used to worship ancestors and feast guests, so it is called "eating jelly". Although the fish jelly with ice cold, but its soft smooth and crisp is the Dong people like the taste.
Fish jelly is the Dong people over the "winter festival" essential traditional delicacies, in the past the winter festival mainly to eat fish jelly, and now the winter festival other delicious food also have everything. Nowadays, other delicacies are also available for the winter festival. Slowly, people call "Eating Jelly" as "Eating Winter" or "Living Dong New Year". In some areas, "eating winter" is called a small year, the Spring Festival for the big year.
The traditional Dong New Year has no uniform date. Different areas of the Dong people over the time of the winter festival is not the same, generally in the late October to late November of the lunar calendar this period. Even in the same area, the time of eating winter is different in each cottage. In some places, such as the 72 cottages in Leli of Rongjiang, the cottages celebrating the Dong New Year are divided into several patches, and they are celebrated sequentially, so the whole month is celebrating the Dong New Year one after another.
The activities and ceremonies of Dong New Year are more or less the same everywhere. On the day of the festival, the host family has to prepare several tables of food and invite friends and relatives to gather. Therefore, they have to kill chickens and ducks, catch fish in the field, offer sacrifices to ancestors and gods, steam glutinous rice, make glutinous rice patties and brew rice wine to entertain their friends and relatives, and it is said that "after eating winter this year, it will be easy in the coming year".
The people who go out for the Dong New Year should try to rush back home, and married daughters should return to their mother's family for reunion. They should also clean the front and back of the house, men, women and children should wear traditional costumes, and they should not work on the day of the festival, rest, feast and entertain. In addition to the sumptuous food and wine, in the activities of the Dong New Year, the traditional entertainment activities such as stepping on the song hall, jumping Lusheng, Dong songs and Dong opera performances will be held, and some places will hold bullfighting competitions.
If we compare, it is obvious that the Dong winter festival has been influenced by the Han winter solstice.
In China's history, the winter solstice has a long history and is regarded as a great winter festival. As early as the Zhou and Qin Dynasties, the winter solstice was the first day of the year. Winter solstice to the Song Dynasty has been extremely prosperous and important, become the festival of ancestor worship. In ancient times, there was a saying that "winter solstice is as big as a year", and in Guangdong Chaoshan area, winter solstice was called "winter festival", and people who went out had to come back to worship their ancestors on this day.
When the winter festival of Dong nationality was born, there is no history because Dong nationality has no own writing. In the early 80s of last century, representatives of Dong ethnic group and experts and scholars from all over the world agreed to take "Winter Festival" as the basis and set the beginning of the 11th month of the lunar calendar as the "Year of Dong" when they met in Guiyang to talk about the "Brief History of Dong Ethnic Groups", and the festival of "Year of Dong" came into being. The festival of the "Year of the Dong".
In 1984, the Dong people in Guizhou, Guangxi and other places held the celebration of the Dong New Year or Winter Festival, and then followed each other's example, and some areas gradually celebrated the "Dong New Year". 2011, the "Dong New Year" was included in the third batch of national intangible cultural heritage list. The year of the Dong has been included in the third batch of national intangible cultural heritage list.
As a later festival, the outside world doesn't know as much about the Dong New Year as it does about the Miao New Year. It is the biggest festival of the year for the Miao people, who celebrate the New Year. The Dong New Year evolved from the past winter festival, and is not considered a festival for the Dong people to celebrate the New Year, most of the Dong people are the same as the Han Chinese to celebrate the Lunar New Year, so it is far from being as lively and grand as the Miao New Year.
It should be said that the Year of the Dong is a composite festival that encompasses many meanings. After different periods of development, the Dong New Year has relatively different customs and meanings for villages in different regions. In addition to the previously mentioned, including the significance of commemorating the winter solstice, there are also sacrifices to ancestors, celebrating the harvest, visiting friends and relatives, early New Year's Eve, and other statements, each of which has its own rationality.
For example, in some villages, "eating winter" is mainly a day of ancestor worship. In the Qingyun area of Congjiang, the twelfth day of the tenth month of the lunar calendar is the annual "Frozen Fish Festival", which commemorates the day when the ancestors of the Shi Clan migrated and settled in the area. On the day of the festival, every family not only prepared frozen fish, but also roasted fish, pickled fish, fried fish, etc., all fish-based. Before the meal, the fish, wine, and glutinous rice must be placed on the shrine, and an ancestor worship ceremony is held to bless future generations with prosperity and good weather in the coming year.
The Winter Festival, in other places, is primarily a celebration of a good harvest. Every year after entering the fall, the weather is gradually becoming cold, when the rice has been harvested, every family is full of grain, the Dong people believe that all the farming affairs are completed in the idle season, that is, the labor of the year has passed, the new year is coming. Therefore, every family kills chickens and ducks, catches fish in the open field, plays mochi, and blows the reed-sheng to celebrate the abundance of grains.
Through the Dong New Year to visit friends and relatives, contact feelings is also the main role of the Dong New Year. There is a saying among the Dong people that the road is not leveled, and the guests are not close to each other. Therefore, many areas of the Dong New Year is staggered, some villages according to the family name of the festival, mainly for the difference of a few days, so that each family can visit each other. On the day of the festival, the hospitable Dong families invite all the guests they can. Some of the guests were not able to, the next day consciously go back to "make up for eating", your family ate eat my family, through the festival everyone is visiting friends and relatives.
While the custom of Dong New Year is different in different parts of the world, but in a broader sense, Dong New Year is a seasonal festival, and many Dong villages actually do not have Dong New Year, which is why Dong New Year is not as influential as Miao New Year.
There are only a few places where the Year of the Dong is celebrated more than the Spring Festival, such as Jiaxiao in Liping County, where the local Dong people with the Yang surname have the custom of celebrating the New Year early.
Liping is the largest county in Southeast Guizhou with the largest population of Dong people, and it is also the main birthplace of Dong culture, so it is called the "capital of the Dong village". In addition to the Dong culture, Liping is most famous for the old town, there is a downhill "warped street", in this street was held because of the famous "Liping Conference", solved the problem of the military route of the Long March, and became the starting point of a great turnaround, representing Liping's history and the red culture. Red culture.
Every year on the first day of the eleventh month of the lunar calendar. Liping will hold large-scale celebration of the Year of the Dong, such as the parade of non-legacy display, Dong singing contest, the opening night party, the Red Army into the city scenario reenactment, etc. In addition to the county, Liping's Zhaoxing, Jiasuo and other places, will also be held in the traditional Year of the Dong folklore display, it is the experience of the Dong Year of the culture of the second choice.
Jiaxuo, one of the branch venues of the Dong New Year in Liping, is surely the liveliest place in the whole Dong New Year activities in Liping.
Jiaxiao is located in the southeast of Liping County, less than 20 kilometers away from the county town with convenient transportation. The village has nearly 380 households and more than 1,700 people, all of whom are surnamed Yang. It is said that the descendants of the Yang family, who moved out from here, are found all over the world. I don't need to go there on a normal day, but I can go there to have a good time on the third day of the eleventh month of the lunar calendar every year when the "Yang family year" is celebrated in Jiasuo.
On the morning of the festival, there was a long line of self-driving cars on the highway one kilometer away from Jiaxiao Dong Village. The visitors are not only tourists, but also Yang clan members, relatives and friends from all over the world who come to celebrate the festival. In front of the "village gate" of Jiaxiao, the village's reed-sheng team is blowing the reed-sheng, welcoming guests from all directions. Dressed up Jiaxiao women set up barricades, put up wine glasses, sang a toast, the plaque next to the fortress door, written "the world Yang family" four words.
The village of Jiaxiao has a famous figure in the Dong ethnic Yang Zaisi, who is the ancestor of most of the Yang family in this area. Yang Zaisi was the chief of the ethnic groups in the border area of Qian, Xiang and Gui provinces during the late Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties, and ruled the nearby counties of Liping, Jingzhou and Jinping, with the name of "Chief of the Ten Dongs", and was known as the "Flying Mountain Eunuch". After Yang Zaisi's troops returned to the imperial court, he was awarded the title of "Marquis of Weiyuan" in the Northern Song Dynasty and "Marquis of Yinghui" in the Southern Song Dynasty for his outstanding achievements in ruling the country and securing the country, and his reputation spread far and wide. Yang Zaisi lived in Jiasuo in his later years and was buried in Changlinggang, Jiasuo after his death. Every year, the Yangs from all over the world will collectively go to Jiaxiao to visit the tomb of Yang Zaisi.
Yang Zaisi is a heroic figure of the Dong ethnic group, and because of his high moral standing, many areas along the border of Guizhou, Hunan and Guizhou provinces have built "Feishan temples" in his honor. Most of the Dong people with the surname Yang claim to be his descendants. Jiazhuo Yang's direct descendants of Yang Zaisi, so it is called "the world Yang family".
Every year on the third day of the 11th month of the Chinese lunar calendar, it is the day of the Dong New Year in Jiasuo. The Dong New Year in Jiasuo is not like the "Winter Festival" in other places, but it is the New Year for the Yangs in Jiasuo.
About the origin of "Yang Nian" in Jiasho, the ancestors told us this. After the ancestors, the Yang family descendants because of outstanding martial arts, able to fight, often by the imperial court to all parts of the war, the late Northern Song Dynasty, Liao troops, because of the sudden war, the Yang family people to be ordered to the expedition, this time is close to the end of the year, the clan calculated that the trip certainly can not go home to celebrate the New Year, so in the first three days of November on the lunar calendar before the expedition, will be the Yang family relatives gathered together to kill pigs and sheep, the same table * * * seat to eat a reunion dinner, in advance of New Year's.
This day is the first time that the Yang family has been invited to the party to the party to the party.
Since then, Yang's children and grandchildren to commemorate their ancestors, the custom of early New Year's Eve on the third day of the eleventh month of the lunar calendar has been inherited, and spread to all the Yang's descendants of the village. The festival of "Yang Family New Year" has been passed down in Jiaxiao for more than 900 years, and has become an important festival affecting the Dong ethnic minority areas.
However, in my research, the people of Jiaxiao do not have a problem with the name "Dong Nian" because not all Dong people celebrate this festival, only the Yang people in this area have the tradition of celebrating the New Year in advance, and they insist on calling their own festival the "Yang Family Year". "
The "Year of the Yangs" in Jiaosuo is similar to the Chinese New Year. Before the year, every family will be busy preparing for the New Year's goods, cleaning the house, brewing wine, making New Year's pies, and posting spring couplets. To the third of November this day to kill pigs and slaughter sheep, organized a sumptuous feast, while inviting relatives and friends to come to the festival, everyone at the same table **** seat, raise a glass to talk about the old, burning incense and candles, worship ancestors, firecrackers, the old and welcome the new.
As the saying goes, "rich or poor, kill a pig to celebrate the New Year", the day before the festival, every family has to kill the New Year's pig to receive guests. On this day, brothers of the same clan will come over to help, the night of the pig, the host family will also invite some friends and relatives to eat "soup" (pig neck meat, small intestine, pig liver and pig's blood, etc. braised into a pot), and send a few jin jin of pork to them to share the joy of the New Year, and at the same time, curing bacon, sausage and other New Year's goods.
Playing Nianba is also an indispensable New Year's custom of the Dong people. Nianba is a round rice cake made of boiled glutinous rice. Regardless of the number of fields, Dong people will grow some glutinous rice in each family and save it for the New Year to make patties. The rice cake is used for ancestor worship, entertaining guests, and gift-giving.
The rice cakes need to be prepared well in advance of the festival, and the number of rice cakes made by each family varies according to the number of visiting friends and relatives. When playing mochi, men swing wooden hammers and women squeeze the mochi. The mochi, wrapped in sugar or black sesame powder and other fillings, is wrapped and pressed into a round shape. The patties are then wrapped and pressed into a round shape, and then presented to friends and relatives during the festival, called "eating Yangba". At the Chinese New Year, the other party will give back the same amount, called "returning Yangba".
The most important thing in the Dong New Year is to eat. Each family should use the best hometown dishes to entertain friends and relatives and guests from all sides, the most common hospitality dishes on the Dong table are blood red, cow yak, pickled fish, pickled meat, white cut chicken and so on. The Dong ethnic New Year's Eve, each family has a "banquet", guests with the arrival of food, some people's home guests will come to more than a hundred people, and it is not lively.
In addition to the regular New Year pig killing and patty cake making, the most famous food here in Jiaxiao is the traditional New Year food such as Dong fruit, pickled fish and oil tea.
Dong fruit is one of the specialties of Dong village in Jiaxiao. During the Dong New Year Festival, many people set up stalls in front of their houses to sell Dong fruits. Jiasuo is the famous "Dong fruit village" in Liping County, and every year in the fall and winter, every family in Jiasuo hangs Dong fruits to dry and makes Dong fruits, and most of the Dong fruits are exported to other areas, except for the needs of New Year's hospitality and gift-giving.
"Dong fruit" is the Dong compatriots during the festival, hospitality essential refreshment food, but also a common ritual offerings, popular in the Dong villages in the counties of Qiandongnan. The production process of the Dong fruit is mainly to use the local fragrant glutinous and wild sweet vine juice into a cake, cut into small pieces, and then dried in the sun, deep-fried, boiled with brown sugar juice to cover the surface, and then sprinkled with sesame seeds, the production is complete. The Dong fruit is brownish yellow in color with crystal sugar coating on the surface, which tastes fragrant, crunchy and sweet.
I can't seem to find any fish jelly in the banquet of the Dong New Year in Jiasuo. Because the Dong New Year in Jiasuo is not a winter festival, but a New Year's celebration, plates of red pickled fish are used instead of fish jelly.
Like Dong fruits, pickled fish is also a specialty of Jiasuo, and the Dong people of Jiasuo would bring out the best pickled fish to share with their guests during the festival.
Liping County Records recorded Jiaxuo Village under the title of "The Hometown of Pickled Fish". In the Dong area, it is said that "Dong pickled fish is the best in Liping, and Liping pickled fish is the best in Jiasuo". Almost every family here is good at making pickled fish, and many people come to Jiasuo to buy some pickled fish to take with them during the Yang New Year.
The Dong people have been saying since ancient times that "the Dong do not leave the acid" and "the Dong do not leave the fish" eating habits, the combination of the two embodied in the pickled fish. Earlier, the people of the Dong people pickled the sour fish more for the need of storage, it was hard to fatten the fish, but they could not eat it all at once, in the era of material shortage, pickling was the main way of preserving food for the people of the Dong, the sour fish could be preserved for a long time and was easy to carry, the people of the Dong people usually went to work in the fields far away from their homes, they would bring a pack of glutinous rice and a few pieces of pickled fish as a meal.
The method of making pickled fish by the Dong people is unique. First, wash the fish, cut it open from the back, remove the internal organs, add salt and marinate for half a day, then use steamed glutinous rice, add chili powder, peppercorns, sweet wine dregs and so on to make pickled dregs, fill the belly of the fish with the pickled dregs, then rub the dregs all over the fish and put them into a bucket, then spread one layer of pickled dregs and one layer of fish in the pickled bucket, laying one layer on top of another, and then seal the mouth of the tank at the end. The pickled fish is stored for a month or two before it is ready to eat, and it is said that the longer it is pickled, the better it tastes.
The colorful Dong pickled fish can be eaten in a variety of ways, including raw, pan-fried or grilled over charcoal. However, most people in Jiaxiao Village prefer to open the jar and eat it immediately, which is equivalent to eating it raw. After months of marinating, the fish meat has been fully marinated. When you take a bite of it, there is a slight sweetness in the freshness and sourness, which is the most authentic flavor of Jiasuo cured fish.
It is said in the Dong tribe that "no Dong without glutinous rice, no fish without sacrifice, no tea without ritual". No matter how rich your offerings are, the three offerings of pickled fish, glutinous rice (or patty cake) and tea are indispensable to the ancestors on festivals.
The Dong people are very hospitable, usually when the guests arrive at home, they will immediately honor them with Dong "oil tea". The tea drunk by Dong people refers to oil tea, which is a soup-like rare food made of fried rice, peanuts, corn, soybeans and other raw materials, and then soaked in boiled oil tea water (tea leaves are fried in oil and then boiled in water to make oil tea water), the combination of these different ingredients collide with the peculiar taste and rich flavor, which can quench their thirst and satisfy hunger at the same time.
In Jiaxiao, every Dong year will be held to worship "Feishan Taigong" Yang Zaisi's ceremony, by the local village old man in national costume to set up wine and incense, offerings, burned paper money, read the words of sacrifice, by burning incense and praying, remembering the great achievements of Feishan Taigong, praying for the country's wind and rain, Tai'an Prosperity, and blessing the clan's physical health, The first time I saw the event, I was able to see it.
In the past, the ancestor worship was held in the drum tower of Jiaxiao. However, because Jiaxiao is now a branch of the Liping Dong Year, there are a series of songs and dances after the festival, so the festival was moved to a temporary stage on the square. There is some discontent among local elders, who believe that ancestor worship is a more serious ceremony and the stage is a place for entertainment, which is not appropriate.
It is clear that the government's involvement in Jiaxuo's traditional annual festival has backfired. Local villagers told me that in order to attract tourists, the county now sends some singers and dancers to come to Jiasuo to stage cultural performances during the Dong New Year, so we, the people of Jiasuo, don't do it ourselves. But in fact, if the county does not come to engage in, we ourselves every year in the Drum Tower ancestor worship, singing songs, play Dong opera, lived more lively than now it ......
There are also people told me, when the county wants to promote the concept of the Year of the Dong, to find around, only the Jiaxiao this place to live the most lively, so to make the Jiaxiao for the Year of the Dong activities of the sub venue, to show the "Year of the Dong", to show the "Year of the Dong". The first time I've seen this, I've seen it, and I've seen it, and I've seen it, and I've seen it, and I've seen it.
While some tourists will come to see the festival, most of the villagers are still not in favor of turning the "Yang Nian" into the "Dong Nian" to pass, mainly because of the atmosphere of the New Year in the Jiaxiao and the past compared to the really a little tasteless.
The author found that the publicity and positioning of the Dong Festival is also misleading to tourists through the Dong Festival.
Objectively speaking, the "Dong Nian" as an officially named festival, in fact, in the vast Dong community does not have popularity. In Southeast Guizhou, only Liping's Jiaxiao, Rongjiang's Leli seventy-two villages, and Jinping's Beidong Jiuzhai area, the Year of the Dong was more grand and lively, while the other areas were "winter festivals", due to the lack of a broad public base, the government propaganda and the creation of the so-called "Dong Year" The government's promotion and creation of the so-called "Year of the Dong" culture, and the actual situation there is a difference, which may be the "Year of the Dong" this festival has not been warm.
Written by Weng Xin
Some images from the Internet
Edited by Pluto