In the north of Shaanxi Province, where the Liangxuan Mountains are running, the unique fire jumping festival, which is called "prairie dry" in the dialect, has been carried on by our ancestors. At this time, the God of Spring has just awakened from the sound of the Lantern Festival gongs and drums, presenting the water walking on the ice, the river willow color of the Langrun image.
The folk song says "the twenty-third of the first month, buckwheat oil churning dough". Jumping Fire Festival on this day's food is a delicate, and eat like a feast, full of table stacks on the onion flowers, oil bowl bowl, garlic mud, fragrant foam, sauce soup, broken vegetables and tender leeks, green coriander, red chili peppers, radish pieces, white cranberries, string beans and so on, the color of the eye, the smell of scratching the heart, as if it was the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, blue and purple bloom. When the hot stir-fried dough out of the pot, you a bowl, I a spoon, after mixing extraordinarily fragrant, gluttony and food, body and soul. In the first month of the meat is too tired, this meal is exquisite, vegetarian rich, like a long time in the haze suddenly blue sky open to bring the refreshing.
The men were busy, sweeping the doorway, finishing the courtyard, but also for the afternoon of the "fried dry" preparations, from the warehouse kiln even out half a dustpan of rough oats, sprayed with water, poured into the woolen pockets, swung up to the ground tom-tom wrestling, and then rubbed his hands vigorously, the oats off the coarse shell. The oats were then sifted up and down with a dustpan, and the remnants of the awns were cleared away. The sun is shining, the oat kernel is yellow, slender and bright, spreading the flavor of raw wheat and the fragrance of the mountains and fields.
The woman washed the pots and pans, picked up the soil bed, also sat in the courtyard, half a dustpan of black sesame seeds, hooked his head carefully picking soil particles, picking up grass. The time is slow and leisurely, the mountains are pale and lonesome, can not help but throat itch, sang up with the heart of the albatross.
Just after the singing, a voice from the side answered:
The road is endless, the wind is endless,
The good family will be full of blessings.
......
And so, you and I sang and answered the intoxicating songs of life. The neighbors' voices joined in the singing, as if you set off, I forsake in the wind, and then again in the field, until the sun shadow in the yard a few steps away, only to rest.
In the afternoon, each family was busy "frying dry", a burst and a burst of beeping boing boing, pan stove fried oats and fried sesame seeds on the smell of burning a ball rippled out.
Before the evening, the elders had already cut back some dead wood from the mountains, or returned to the sunny slopes with a few hugs of dried artemisia. They put a pile of them outside the front door for the gods to dance on, and a pile of them in the yard for people to dance on. When the blue sky seeps out the crystal stars, the earth floats up the night, the village will be swept up in the rising and falling of the people's words and noises.
"Jumping fire - jumping fire -", the children's excited and tender voice, in the night sky oboe-like loud. I don't know who's home, urgently lit a fire, boom, reflecting the halfway ditch; and a family also burned a bonfire, illuminating the opposite mountain; each family gradually burning fire, the village up and down, the fire all over the place, reflecting the light. The mountain mount is clear, the road is bright, the kiln yard is red, the smile is sweet ......
I always remember the scene in my childhood. Before the fire was lit, my mother first sprinkled some salt, beans and rice on the woodpile, and then put a year's worth of pot brushes and dishcloths into it. The embers of the fire were then huffed and puffed upwards, and the flames rose to a height of a few meters, brightening the courtyard.
In the face of the high flame head, we these little dolls, you push and shove, do not dare to leap over, only in the fire around the edge of the circle. Or adults first take the lead, running towards the fire tightly, cut legs and leap, all of a sudden the figure was engulfed in flames, in the blink of an eye and swept back from the fire. My brothers and sisters couldn't help themselves and scrambled to be the first to jump on the fire, and their strange fire jumping postures would always make my family laugh. When it was my turn to jump on the fire, the flames were only a foot high, and the moment I jumped over them, I felt the fire burning and the heat wave hitting my face. As I grew up, my heart got bigger, and I would rush to higher flames, jump over bigger fires, and continue to gain confidence in overcoming obstacles and hurdles. Although, when children have fallen into the fire, burned legs and feet of the accident, but will not retreat, because jumping fire festival to the Shaanbei children's hearts planted the seeds of bravery, has been in the life of the trip green.
The family's elderly grandparents, but also to participate in the fire jumping, was the children and grandchildren from the kiln to help out, clustered to the fire, slowly stilt legs and over, but also even prairie to the guilt and disaster, won a year of good luck. At this time, to add firewood to the fire, the tongue of the fire once again popped up high, the yard again full of bright. At this time, the most sacred ceremony of the fire jumping festival should be held: more than ten people in the family, facing the fire, in a circle, holding hands with each other, tightly holding, firmly holding, following the mother to chant together:
prairie dry, prairie clean, all year round, no disease; everyone jumps on the fire, can be prairie away all the diseases; the next year, the wind and rain, the four seasons of the peace and prosperity of the harvest; our family are prairie, wellbeing and happiness! No worries ......
The song of the whole family, so that the night is incomparably deep, a real sense of happiness will roam the heart, so beautiful that I have tears in my eyes. Kissing family, family in the same boat through thick and thin, family of flesh and bone, family that loves each other, we will always be together!
Later, I went to the city to work, back home for New Year's Eve, only a few days to close the vacation. With special feelings, had to take the child specifically back home to the fire jumping festival. The daytime food, the night lively. After the family sang around the fire, white-haired mother held my hand and my child's hand, specially walked to the fire, murmuring for my little family and children praying for peace, success, happiness ...... Listening, I can not help but tears rolling, flawless mother's love has become the most brilliant illumination in the spring night. The fire will go out, the father with a shovel to shovel the ashes out of the door, raised in all directions, while raising the spread, while saying: send dirty miles, send the plague miles, send the sick miles, son and grandson are auspicious ......
The urbanization of the construction of the rapid acceleration of the whip, a lot of farmers brothers were able to go to the city to live, and the traditional folklore in the city took root in the blossoming. Now, every fire jumping festival, each neighborhood presents a new kind of hustle and bustle. Early in the evening, someone downstairs in the neighborhood with enamel washbasin flames, just like a swinging flag, beckoned adults and children, and soon gathered dozens of people, began a lively fire jumping. Usually do not get along with the neighbors cordial, the old cold face smiled, people are extraordinarily friendly and unity, creating an auspicious spring. Look at the fire jumping, joyful and incomparable: children like lively deer, from the fire pot jumped over; girls like the wind enchanting peach branches, a swing over; middle-aged men like a strong bear, pouncing over; the old man is being helped, step by step over; occasionally, the fire jumpers bumped into the embrace, stirring up a tide of laughter.
Looking down from the window, the flames flickered downstairs, and people were in the shadows. People formed a thin oval, rhythmic fire jumping. And the square-dancing ladies, who have been silent for a Spring Festival, play the melody of Albatross on their speakers and dance neatly beside them. The local and the city, the traditional and the modern, harmonize here, and the folk culture stretches and spreads. In my opinion, the fire jumping festival is the butterfly change of the life of the people in northern Shaanxi, from the New Year's food and comfort of the lethargy of the composition of the cocoon, consciously to spring, in pursuit of the splendor of life. Of course, jumping fire festival is also a determined turn, consciously close the door of the last year, abandon pleasure, advocate labor, towards the goal of the heart of hard work.
And, I have no doubt that the men and women of northern Shaanxi, must be jumping from the fire festival in the courage and strength, with the spirit of the disease-free self-confidence, full of life, so that the formation of the atmosphere, bold, simple, bold group character, even if the poor and lowly can be the heavens and the earth, and never lose to the rich and powerful and ***, in order to distinctive character was praised by the people of the south of the world. Therefore, there will be unveiled and invincible peasant revolts, but also the red Shaanxi period of the vast majority of the people's deep understanding of the righteousness of the people and the front and back.
The stars are bright, the fire is red. Shaanbei people to jump fire festival of spring leap, shake up the spirit, began to live up to the time of the new life.