The Qiang people still have a primitive religion, and they worship all kinds of spirits. The Qiang people worship more than thirty kinds of gods and spirits, including nature worship, ancestor worship, spirit worship and totem worship. In addition to the fire god to pot Zhuang (fire pit) as a representative, the rest are to a white quartz stone (Qiang language called a grip, meaning white stone god) as a symbol, is widely worshiped, enshrined in the roof in the highest place of the white stone god that is the god of the sky Mu Bita.
Historically, the Qiang district has no national religious organizations and temples, religious occupations are not detached from the production of the Qiang sorcerer (the Chinese said that the end of the public, the Qiang language called "Xu", "Shibi" respectfully called "Abba Xu"). Abba Xu"). The "Xu" is a male only, and can marry and have children. Its main scriptures for the upper, middle and lower three altar scriptures **** 16, no written records into a book, relying on oral tradition, passed down to the present day. The scriptures are in rhyme, with four words and two stanzas, emphasizing the ups and downs of the level and the rhythm of the sound. The main magical instruments of "Xu" include monkey head cap, sheepskin drum, gong, sacred stick, master knife, token and animal bone seal, goat horn trigrams and so on. The spells of "Xu" include divination (sheep thigh divination, egg divination, white dog divination, etc.), driving away ghosts and evil spirits (sending people), stepping on red pots, stepping on ploughs and huahua, opening the red mountain, paddling the bowl of water, etc. The main instruments of "Xu" are monkey head hat, gong, gong, teacher's knife, tokens and animal bone seals, sheep horn trigrams and so on. "Before performing the ritual, one should wash the future with clean water, burn incense and cypress to smoke the body, or kill white chickens to offer to the ancestors. In case of big sacrificial activities, such as mountain festival ceremony, adult rites, etc., it is also necessary to avoid eating onions and garlic fasting and bathing for 49 days in advance to show piety and respect to God. In the Qiang village, all the sacrifices to the mountain, the crown ceremony, the return of the wish, Anshen to drive away the ghosts, cure the disease, unexpected obscenity, invoke the soul, eliminate disasters, look at the feng shui, and even the repair of the house, the house, men and women, the marriage, the naming of newborns, and the super-deaths, etc., must be in the "Hsu" to preside over the Qiang people in the status of the Qiang people is very high, not only is the intermediary between the gods and the human beings, but also a cultural disseminator, and even more plays a role of spiritual leadership. He is the intermediary between the gods and the people, the transmitter of culture, and the spiritual leader of the Qiang people.
The most important Qiang festivals are the "Sacrifice of the Mountain" and the "Qiang New Year Festival", which are held in spring and autumn respectively. Praying for good weather in the spring and thanking the gods for the abundance of grains in the autumn, the festival is actually a kind of agricultural activity with spring prayers and autumn rewards, but it is always full of rich religious colors and reflects the glory of the mysterious culture of the far-occupied region. The time to hold a mountain festival is not uniform throughout the world, there is the first month, April, May, or held once a year or 2-3 times, the mountain festival procedures are extremely complex, the sacrifice due to different legends around the different totems and different differences, can be roughly divided into the "Sheep Sacrifice", The sacrifices can be roughly categorized into three types: "sacred sheep offering to the mountain", "sacred cow offering to the mountain" and "hanging dog offering to the mountain". The ceremony is held on an empty dam in the sacred grove. In some places, after the festival, the road is also sacrificed for three days and it is forbidden to go up to the mountain to chop wood, cut grass, dig seedlings and hunt.
The Qiang New Year Festival is held on the first day of the 10th lunar month every year, usually for 3-5 days, and some villages have to celebrate it on the 10th day of the 10th lunar month. According to the folk custom, the Qiang New Year is a time to honor the gods, the gods of the sky, the gods of the mountains and the owners of the land. The whole village should have reunion dinner, drink smack, dance Shalang, until all the fun is over. The whole ceremony is presided over by "Xu", and the smacking wine is opened by the respected elders in the village. During the festival, friends and family can congratulate each other and invite each other.
The Qiang men who have reached the age of fifteen still have the custom of holding the rite of passage (crown ceremony). Before the event, friends and relatives should be invited to sit around the fire, and the person to be crowned is dressed in new clothes, kneeling and bowing down to the human ancestor statue, while accepting the gift from "Xu" on behalf of the God of Heaven - a five-color cloth (amulet) bolted with a white ram's wool thread, followed by the clan elders to recount the history of the ancestors, and the "Xu" chanting by the Afterwards, the elders of the clan will recount the history of their ancestors, and the family gods and goat gods can be sacrificed by the "Xu" chanting and praying (commonly known as playing the "Taiping protection").
The Qiang in the upper reaches of the Minjiang River are subject to natural conditions and environmental constraints, and most of their production and living customs remain at the stage of farming culture, and where they live, they "live in the mountains and base their houses on rocks", and they eat and dress themselves and grow their own food and harvest themselves, and are self-sufficient.
Housing Qiang housing is generally based on the ground, with stones built by hand, there are two or three layers, mostly flat-roofed houses. The back of the house is rammed with yellow mud to keep out the rain, and there is a slight inclined surface to facilitate drainage. Two-story house plus repair livestock pens, latrines; three-story house on the ground floor for the corral, the houses are connected with a single wooden ladder. Thirty, fifty houses gathered for a fortress, that is, the Qiang case, respectively located in the high mountains and river valleys, lined up, spectacular. The Republic of China "Wenchuan County Records" said: "Qiang soil Zhaiju, as far as the Western-style foreign buildings".
Deng cage (Qiang Diaoyu Qiong cage for the Qiang another characteristic building, "high more than ten zhang" by several years and does not decline. Qiong cage made of stone, divided into four-pronged, six-pronged, eight-pronged, eight-pronged a variety of vertical lines. Generally built in the mouth of the fortress, the role of defense in wartime, and both the function of the beacon, is a cultural phenomenon of the Qiang people.
Historically, the clothing of the Qiang people was made of self-produced flax after processing and spinning, commonly known as the "hemp shirt", or woven with cow's wool after hanging the line, commonly known as the "shirt", and there were also cloth shirts, with the green color being the most common. Men wear a belt around their waist and women wear a flower belt around their waist. Outside, they wear sleeveless sheepskin lab coats, with their feet wrapped around their legs, and grass shoes or "yunyun shoes" (Qiang-embroidered cloth shoes). After the liberation of the river valley, the Qiang people more in Chinese clothes.
The diet of self-produced corn, wheat, wheat, beans, taro and vegetables are the main food. The diet mainly consists of steamed rice, burnt buns, knife slice buns, noodle skins (noodle blocks), mai lazi (noodle soup), taro patties and so on. Specialty foods are steamed wine, blood buns and so on. Commonly smoked self-produced orchid cigarettes. Qiang District produces apples, peppers, walnuts and other cash crops, which are now sold at home and abroad.
Marriage Qiang monogamy. Historically, there are "finger kisses", "doll kisses", "swap kisses", "buy and sell kisses", and also "bride kidnapping". There is also the custom of "bride kidnapping". Engagement and "female flower night", "wine", "thank you", "back to the door" and other procedures, extremely grand. Men are not discriminated against when they go to a woman's home. After the marriage and birth of a child, there is the custom of sending good luck rice and drinking full moon wine.
In addition to cremation, there are earth burials, open burials and rock burials.
The Qiang folklore is very rich. The famous narrative poems "Muji Zhu and Douan Zhu" and "The Battle of Qiangge" are not only national epics, but also precious cultural treasures. Folktales such as "Flood Toward Heaven" and "The Opening of Heaven and Earth" reflect the unique aesthetic and artistic outlook of the Qiang people. The Qiang are a people who are good at singing and dancing. The beautiful Salang Dance and the touching mountain songs are the crystallization of the traditional culture of the Qiang people.
The Qiang's embroidery is an important part of the history of arts and crafts in China.
From "living by the water and grass" to "living by the mountain and building the stone as a room", the Qiang people have experienced a long period of time and created a splendid culture, which has made great contributions to the development of the southwest border area and the maintenance of the unification of the motherland. Qiang culture is colorful and has a long history. In the new era, the Qiang people have given new connotation to the Qiang culture. The Qiang people are basing on the natural advantages and resource advantages, vigorously developing hydropower industry, tourism, agriculture, industry and commerce, and forestry, fruit and animal husbandry, and the Qiang area will be better tomorrow. The Qiang culture will be more brilliant.
- Qiang food: The main food of the Qiang people is corn, wheat, barley, soybean, soybean, soybean, buckwheat, etc. The Qiang people also eat rice and flour which are brought from the west of Sichuan. Vegetables are round root radish, cabbage, chili peppers, lotus white, etc., often eat their own pickles, three meals a day as a habit. Production of food, cooking is relatively simple, the common method is corn porridge with vegetables, called "Mai Lazi"; there is also cornmeal or wheat flour buns or corn steamed, called "noodle steaming"; boiled to half raw with rice mixed with cornmeal steaming, this rice, such as cornmeal-based called "gold wrapped in silver". "Gold wrapped in silver", rice-based called "silver wrapped in gold"; there are barley or wheat to do fried noodles for grazing or eating out. Qiang people usually eat very little fresh pork, generally in the winter solstice after the killing of pigs, pork cut into long strips hanging in the stove room beams, to smoke dry into "pig fat", the color smoked yellow is good, the traditional concept is that this "pig fat" stored for a longer period of time the better. After killing the pig fresh lean meat, washed and poured into the small intestine for sausage, usually eaten on New Year's Day.
Both men and women, young and old, are happy to drink barley, barley home-brewed smack wine, also known as barley miscellaneous wine or brewing barley or barley boiled accompanied by wine, put into the altar, covered with grass or clothing 7 days after the sour and become. Drinking altar into the boiling water, insert a thin bamboo tube, take turns sucking, generally drink half of the water and then add water to the flavor of talk until. In the past, they used to smoke orchids, but now they mostly smoke cigarettes. In villages close to Tibetan villages or villages with mixed populations, the old men and women also smoke snuff.
- Qiang etiquette: The Qiang and other ethnic minorities in the south-west of the country have a popular hospitality etiquette of drinking smack wine. When a guest arrives at home, the host often invites the guest to drink the local specialty of Qiang wine (i.e. "smacking wine") as a token of respect. First, the table and the wine altar with glutinous rice wine were placed in the hall, no seats were set around the table, and the guests stood around the table. Before drinking, the host calls the housewife to come out and open the altar, and brings a basin or bowl full of hot water. People use a thin bamboo to suck on the water and then inject it into the wine altar, so that the wine does not owe or overflow. Then, the hosts and guests take turns drinking from the bamboo. When the liquor is finished, water is added until the taste of the liquor is light.
- Qiang taboos: 1. Before the full moon, a woman in labor is not allowed to go into the stove room for fear of offending the God of Stove and the God of the Household, and she is not allowed to see the living for fear that the living will bring the ghosts into the house.
2. Pregnant women can not enter the new room of the newlyweds.
3. The patient is forbidden to see the stranger, and a bench is set up outside the ward to show that outsiders are refused to enter. Whistling is prohibited in the patient's room at night.
4. After the meal, you can not put the chopsticks horizontally on the bowl, and can not be upside down wine compote, because it is a ceremony to honor the ghost.
5. Avoid sitting on doorways and stairs.
6. On the first day of the first month of the lunar calendar, it is forbidden to shout and curse loudly, and to hide the fire poker, rope and chopper, as these things symbolize bad luck.
- Qiang funeral: Fire grave, Qiang funeral custom. In the area of Yanmen Township of Maobo Autonomous Region, there are several fire graves in one village. These graves are located near the villages and are made of wooden planks with a small door about five feet square. When a person dies, the coffin is burned together. Sweeping ash from the small door into the fire grave. Some places are several surnames **** a fire grave.
In the old days, the Qiang people had three forms of earth burial, water burial and cremation. Cremation is a burial style inherited from ancient times. After the liberation of only about some areas of the North still practicing cremation, other areas have changed due to the influence of the Han Chinese. Cremation is still used for those who died of murder, infectious diseases and other unnatural deaths. Cremation takes place three days after death. Before the cremation must ask the end of the public recite the mantra, and then carried to the crematorium, where there is a small cabin can be moved, within the enshrinement of the gods of the family history, at this time will be removed from the cabin elsewhere, and should be cremated coffins placed in the original place, and then piled up around the firewood even the coffins burned. At this time, the relatives of the deceased sit around to learn martial arts and perform funeral dances. After the cremation, the ashes are buried in the ground or in a cave.
- Qiang Marriage and Family: The Qiang marriage is basically monogamous. Before the liberation of the People's Republic of China, young men and women did not have the freedom to fall in love, and they regarded the freedom to fall in love as a detriment to the family culture, so the marriage could not be free, and the feudal trade marriage prevailed.
Engaged to be married by three procedures, the first "open wine", that is, Xu mouth wine. When men and women are still underage, the male party to ask the matchmaker to the female side of the heart, such as agreeing to a certain time proposed by the parents, the male party to the female side of the home to organize a banquet, the name of the "open wine". At the banquet, the woman proposed the amount of bride price, which was agreed upon by both parties, indicating the initial success of the engagement. A few months later, the male family went to the woman's home to prepare a banquet to entertain close relatives, called "small fixed wine", at this time to send some gifts, placed on top of the god, to show the solemnity. On the "Big Booking Wine", the two families specifically agreed on the date of marriage, the male party to feast on guests, hospitality to female relatives and friends, at this time, the male party according to the agreement to pay the bride price, in particular, to prepare a penny of silver to send the mother in law, in the whole process of the betrothal, the girl shall not be exposed, hidden in the room or friends and relatives home.
The Qiangs are basically monogamous and patriarchal families, each family is a production and living unit. Generally speaking, families are cohabiting with their immediate family members, and most of the family members are grandparents and grandchildren. Two generations of parents and children predominate. On average, each family has three to five members, except for the only son, many families in the son grows up to be married, separated from the family independent gateway. Parents stay around a son for the old age to send the end of the dependence and the seedling of succession, stayed with the youngest son is mostly.
The head of the family was the eldest male, and the father was the head of the family, and if the father died, the son could be the head of the family. If the father dies, the son can take over. If the heir dies, the family property is inherited by the father's relatives. In the family, the male is always in a dominant position, can dominate the family income and expenditure, arrange production, decide to marry and inheritance of property, preside over the ancestor worship and participate in major social activities. Women, on the other hand, are in a dominant position, not only do they not have the right to inherit property, but they also cannot participate in major rituals, and they cannot talk or laugh with men at will. Because Qiang women occupy an important position in production and labor, except for not plowing the land, they are in charge of agricultural work and household chores from planting to harvesting, and they also have greater power and status in the family due to the influence of the remnants of the matriarchal system. For example, they must be consulted on the marriage of their children, and their son-in-law can inherit the family business when they have no children. In addition, in the family, the maternal uncle has more power, such as marriage, funeral, separation, inheritance and other major events, all have to be promised by the maternal uncle and presided over by them to deal with.
Qiang Festivals: The grandest national festivals of the Qiang people are the "Mountain Sacrifice Festival" (also known as the "Mountain Turning Festival") and the "Qiang New Year Festival" (also known as the "Qiang Calendar Year"), which are held in spring and fall respectively. Praying for good weather in spring, and thanking the gods for the abundant harvests in autumn, it is actually a kind of agricultural activity with spring prayers and autumn rewards, but it is always full of rich religious colors, reflecting the glory of the ancient mysterious culture. The time to hold a mountain festival is not uniform across the region, there is the first month, April, May, or held once a year or 2-3 times, the mountain festival procedures are extremely complex, the sacrifice due to different legends around the different totems and different differences, can be roughly divided into the "Sheep Sacrifice", The sacrifices can be roughly divided into three types: "sacred sheep offering to the mountain", "sacred cow offering to the mountain" and "hanging dog offering to the mountain". Ceremonies are held in the sacred forest on an empty dam. In some places, after the festival, the road has to be sacrificed for three days, and it is forbidden to go up to the mountain to cut wood, grass, seedlings and hunting.
The Qiang New Year Festival is held on the first day of the tenth month of the lunar calendar every year, usually for 3-5 days. According to the folk custom, the Qiang New Year is a time to honor the gods, the gods of the sky, the gods of the mountains and the owners of the land. The whole village should have reunion dinner, drink smack, dance Shalang, until all the fun is over. The whole event is presided over by "Xu", and the smacking wine is opened by the respected elders in the village. During the festival, friends and relatives can congratulate each other and invite each other.
Other gatherings
March 3: Married women honor the Niangniang Bodhisattva on March 3 every year, begging God to give children, blessing the child peace.
March 12: March 12 every year, the village to slaughter a sheep, praying for the land Bodhisattva blessed harvest, and avoid the road for a day, prohibiting pedestrians into the village, this day is known as the "Qingmiao will".
July 7: unmarried women have to do every year on July 7, "Qiaoya will". That is, invite the neighboring girls, gather together, sing and dance, and have fun.
November 1: November 1 every year, to the Cow King Temple to burn incense, wax, paper money, and slaughter a sheep, a chicken, praying for the Cow King Bodhisattva blessing the peace of the cattle. On this day, the whole village of the plowing oxen to rest for a day, so it is also known as the "cattle king will".
Shan Wang will: "Shan Wang will" is to pray for the blessing of the King of the mountain Bodhisattva, six animals prosperous, abundant crops. When you do this, you have to slaughter a goat. The period of the meeting of the mountain king will be different from village to village.
Guanyin Hui: "Guanyin Hui", three times a year, the first is March 19, the second is June 19, the third is September 19, praying for Guanyin Bodhisattva to bless the village large and small population peace.
Chuanzhonghui: "Chuanzhonghui", June 24 every year, held in the village as a unit, worship Chuanzhong. On that day, the whole village rests, wearing new flowers, singing and dancing, and organizing banquets, which is the largest temple fair.