The Pingyuan Hakka, descendants of the Han people in the ancient Central Plains, formed a unique custom and traditional consciousness of the Hakka people in their long-term handicraft life.
1. Production customs
The main business is to cultivate the land, and the grass is divided into two seasons in the morning and evening. When the farmers are busy, the villagers help each other, regardless of remuneration. Men go out more often to earn a living. Housekeeping and farming are performed by women. Traditional farmers have plough rakes, rake shafts, feet, iron ties, wo sickles, swing rakes, wooden keel water wheels and so on.
Women go up the mountain to cut grass is called cut Lu Xuan, Hakka women Lu Xuan Dan is the most distinctive, a load of Lu Ling two heads a total of eight bundles, with bamboo bar hook rope tied to the burden, four flat eight stable, in the old times, the garden planted ramie, women use it to weave into summer cloth, known as home machine cloth. Another kind of jute is used to weave rope, such as roses, cow ropes, etc.
2. Customs of life
Costumes In the old days, self-woven loom cloth was used to make quilts and clothing, and now they have been eliminated, and in the early days of the Republic of China, officials and gentry and Confucians wore robes and horses, and the clothing of civilian men and women was open-placket, and the women's was in the cardigan, called the cardigan, the length of the clothes was knee-length, and now the costumes are diverse and Western-style is prevalent.
Shoes and hats In the old days, there were cloth shoes, commonly known as Ammu shoes. Straw shoes and Cantonese traditional wooden shoes, there are many varieties, the style is becoming more and more novel, in the old winter men wear felt hats, top hats and cotton hats. Women wear hats (head skirts) made of blue cloth in winter.
Diet Three meals a day, mainly rice. In the old days, rice was cooked in a pot in the morning, and rice was fished up with a hood, and served in rice tiles for a day to eat, and the traditional famous dishes and famous foods were "garlic stewed pork", "stewed dog meat", "fried chicken wine", "salt and fire bureau chicken", "buckle meat", "dipped duck", "stuffed tofu", "raw fish", "immortal board", "lard board", "pot tuk board", "yellow plate" and so on.
The most distinctive and representative Hakka house is the "Dragon House", which is mostly built in front of hills, slopes or small hills with staggered fields. The architectural technology adopted is the most advanced form of "beam lifting" and "piercing bucket" in the architecture of the Han nationality in the Central Plains, and its structure is generally "one into three halls, two boxes and one enclosure". In front of the house, there is a sunbathing flat, inside the gate, divided into upper, middle and lower three halls; left and right are divided into two or four boxes, extending backwards with two compartments to form a horseshoe-shaped rear wall, which is characterized by a half-axis of north-south meridian, symmetry left and right, and a half-moon pond in front of the house and a dragon house behind the main hall combined into a large pole-shaped whole.
3. Marriage customs
Before liberation, the marriage of Pingyuan people was divided into "big marriage", "child brides-in-law", "waiting for lang sisters", and "second marriage relatives". Marriage is mostly arranged marriages that are "the fate of the parents and the words of the concubine". The procedures include etiquette such as fixing relatives, nacai, greeting relatives, visiting the church and making cave rooms, and doing three dynasties. On the day of welcoming relatives, the woman wears a cheongsam, wears a phoenix crown, rides a flower palanquin, when married, first a child peach branch or banyan branch to open the road, called dragging green, the male family drums music to welcome relatives, after the flower palanquin to the man's home, the groom will kick the car door to help the bride into the house to become a relative, in the old days, after the small household gave birth to a boy, it would pick up (receive) a girl from the neighboring foreign surname, commonly known as "careful uncle". After becoming an adult, they became relatives in the late Chinese New Year's Eve, called the round house, which is the child bride. When Lang Sister was old, some poor people did not have sons at that time, first bought a girl to raise, and when they had a boy, they were matched as a couple, and when they grew up, they were married. Some daughters-in-law grow up to eighteen years old, and the "little husband" is only a few years old, so there is a saying that "eighteen wives and three-year-old men". After the founding of New China, the marriage was newly handled, the great civilization was vigorously promoted, there were collective weddings, men to women's homes, travel marriages, tea parties and other forms, the wedding was simple and warm.
4. Ritual customs
In the old days, the old man died, commonly known as "passing"; burial, commonly known as "returning the mountain". Funerals also have a lot of red tape, and rich families also have to extend the chanting of monks (commonly known as fasting). Pingyuan County uses coffin burial as a shang, and now it has removed the old habit of cremation and sacrifice, and all surnames in Pingyuan have ancestral shrines, which are set up in the county town as ancestral halls, and the ancestral halls of the clan are also known as ancestral halls. Ancestors are sacrificed to the spring festival and the autumn festival, the spring festival is mainly in the form of tomb sweeping, the autumn festival is in August, each surname has a festival day, from the first day of August to the autumn equinox. But there are also some areas where ancestors are worshipped on a half-and-seventh day or other times.