That was ten years ago. Because of my work relationship, I began to spend nearly a year from November 2010, leading my young colleagues Donna, Liu Xiaoyan and Duan Xinpei, a photographer who was older than me, to run between villages and villages, conducting fieldwork on the craftsmanship and living state of Chinese cloth tigers, recording the forgotten folk customs of the mountains and rivers, the neglected craftsmen, and the legendary rural stories.
Day and night, we searched for the best cloth tiger artists in China, pulling them to dictate, shoot the process, and collect their handicraft works. We have formed a deep friendship with Qiao Niang from all over the country, and we have also harvested their half-sold and half-gifted pieces of art.
Over the years, some of the inheritors of the older generation have passed away, and some have carefully passed on their full-body skills to their apprentices.
The skills are passed down from generation to generation in the hands of the inheritors, and the Chinese tiger culture information behind the cloth tiger shape is also passed down, which is the unique cultural gene of the Chinese nation.
1
Tiger worship precedes dragon worship
Chinese have worshipped dragons since ancient times, and the sons and daughters of China are proud of their status as "descendants of dragons". Its intrinsic cultural identity is that the dragon is the ancestral god and the totem of the Chinese nation. If you do a root-seeking exploration along the dragon culture, you will find that tiger worship is as important cultural phenomenon as dragon culture in China, it appeared almost at the same time as dragon culture, and even began to have an impact on the Chinese nation earlier.
The so-called tiger culture refers to the general term for the understanding, beliefs, concepts, and customs of the tiger formed by a specific cultural tradition. In petroglyphs dating back about 10,000 years in Heilongjiang and Inner Mongolia, images of tigers have appeared. Ye Shuxian, president of the Chinese Mythological Society, wrote an article pointing out that after the bear, the tiger became the king of the hundred beasts in folk belief, and was defined as "mountain jun" in the "Commentary on the Interpretation of Texts", that is, the mountain god, and the mighty eight sides also had the function of driving away evil spirits.
About 7,000 years ago, in the Baoji area of the upper reaches of the Weishui River, the Fuxi tribe was mainly engaged in hunting. This prehistoric tribe has fought against beasts for generations, worshipping the tiger, the king of the mountains, and revering it as a totem.
In June 1975, a mussel sculpture of a dragon and tiger was excavated from the original tomb of Xishuipo in Puyang, Henan, which has a history of 6000 to 7000 years, and is known as "the first dragon tiger in the world" or "the first dragon tiger in China", indicating that in the belief of the late primitive society, not only the dragon god, but also the tiger god, the dragon and tiger culture existed at the same time. The dragon and tiger statues in the tomb are carefully arranged with mussel shells, the dragon is on the right side of the tomb owner, and the tiger is on the left side of the tomb owner. Some experts believe that the owner of the tomb may be the grandson of the Yellow Emperor.
In ancient times, the custom of the Ba people to worship the tiger was also displayed from the excavated weapons. Tigers, as their clan gods, give strength and protection to their people in war, and the "tiger tail" as part of the gods naturally carries divine power, which is the primitive sorcery thinking.
In the Shang Dynasty oracle bones more than 3,000 years ago, there are words composed of tigers and people, which may indicate disaster. There are many aliases for tigers, such as Yu Suo, Li Father, Li Er, Bo Du, Feng Zhijun, Banzi, Yinke, Huang Gong, etc., and the folk also call it Shenhu, Ai Hu, Tiger, Tiger Cat and so on.
The Year of the Tiger zodiac flower lantern photographed in Jinan, Shandong Province, on January 18
From the Shang, the Zhou to the Spring and Autumn Period, and the Warring States, after more than 1,300 years, the decoration of the tiger was mainly enjoyed by the upper ruling class. Probably since the Han Dynasty, the decoration of the tiger has spread to the folk and gradually become a folk custom, which has continued to this day.
The above information shows that in China, the emergence of tiger culture is not later than that of dragon culture, and the earliest folk worship of tigers is inseparable from the living environment of the ancestors and the specific historical and cultural background at that time. Tiger worship precedes dragon worship, because the hunting civilization predates the agricultural civilization, which is determined by the objective law of production, and is also the result of comprehensive research in anthropology, history, archaeology, and philology.
Later, the folk worship of the tiger gradually mixed with the dragon chongxin, and then was replaced by the dragon culture. The agricultural people rely on the sky to eat, and the dependence on rain produces a reverence for the dragon, and once the political situation is stable, the people's life is relatively rich, and the dependence on rain on agriculture becomes the mainstream, the dragon culture has the upper hand. Coupled with the feudal dynasty's love for dragons, the dragon became the exclusive property of the royal family, and the totemic image of the dragon was further strengthened. The tiger culture is exiled to the people, and has gained free growth by virtue of the strong vitality of the folk.
Evidence also suggests that the reverence for tigers is associated with people's fear of nature. The fall of benevolence and righteousness on the heads of birds and animals such as phoenixes and white tigers is a mythological projection of Confucian moral ideals in the animal world.
2
Folk tiger culture
The worship of Fuxi, the ancestor of Chinese humanities, is closely related to the tiger custom.
Fu Xi Zhi Xi, from the sheep from qiang. He was an outstanding leader of the Qiang people, a hunter-gatherer of Chonghu, who was active in the area of abundant water and grass in the area around Tianshui in present-day Gansu, inspired by the east flow of the Wei River, developed eastward along the Wei River, developed eastward through Shaanxi and Henan, and then developed eastward along the Yellow River, and then moved in the Huaiyang area of Henan, creating Chinese civilization and finally being buried in Puyang. Legend has it that Fuxi and Nüwa were originally brothers and sisters, after Pangu opened the world, the brothers and sisters were arranged to marry and reproduce, and Nüwa was shy to transform into a tigress and wear a straw hat, which became the origin of the later Han women who married and wore red hijabs.
A fieldwork in the Huaiyang area found that the local ancestor worship was prevalent, and the Fuxi ancestral temple fair, which lasted for one month from the second day of the second month of the second lunar month every year, was unprecedented. The cloth tiger at the temple fair is regarded as the embodiment of the ancestors of the Fuxi people, who can protect their descendants. For hundreds of years, huaiyang's local cloth tiger business attached to the temple fair has been very good, and most of the people who rush to the temple fair will bring a cloth tiger back to ward off evil spirits for children.
In contemporary rural China, tiger culture is still widely present in people's daily lives.
Cloth tiger in Zaozhuang, Shandong (courtesy of Ma Zhiyao)
Tigers in evil towns are usually placed or posted on cabinets, rice jars, or doors and windows in the room. As a result, the way of expression has also changed: some are made of cloth tigers, some are paper cuts, and some are New Year paintings.
On the day of the Dragon Boat Festival, children in some places should wear vests embroidered with tigers driving away five poisons, on the pattern, surrounded by five poisons, and in the middle is a tiger, which means that the tiger can drive away the five poisons. The tiger motif of this day is called "Ai Hu", which refers to wormwood and has the effect of exorcising evil spirits. In Shandong, Shanxi and Henan, there is a general habit of embroidering Ai Hu during the Dragon Boat Festival, but the shape of Ai Hu is different.
Shaanxi, Sichuan, Lianghu, Yungui and other places used to hang wooden tiger heads on the lintels to ward off evil spirits, or draw tiger heads on gourd scoops, called "swallowing mouths".
In the past, many of the shop heads of Chinese houses were tiger heads, and later generations have evolved and transformed into various shapes, and have long lost their original appearance. However, we found in rural Henan that the shop heads on the gates of many houses clearly maintain the shape of a tiger's head, which is significantly different from other regions.
Cloth tiger in Linyi, Shandong (courtesy of Ma Zhiyao)
Not only is the tiger a god in the Han family, a beast that can protect children and ward off evil spirits, but folklore also personifies the tiger and softens the fierce tiger into a friend who lives in harmony with humans. Jiaodong Peninsula is popular in a kind of children's amulet nature of paper cutting called "dragon life, tiger milk, carving shed", the simplest one is a tiger and a child, the tiger makes a smiley face, hanging tail, hidden claws, showing maternal love, the next child sucks the tiger's nipple on his back. This picture shows the motherhood of the tiger, and also shows the spiritual mirror image of the ancestors' supreme reverence for nature and the desire for the peaceful coexistence of man and nature.
Tiger culture also has many manifestations in the folk life of ethnic minorities. Tiger Festival is a traditional festival of the Yi people, which begins at sunset on the eighth day of the first lunar month and ends before sunrise on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. The Yi people, who live in Wheat Dichong, Shuangbai County, Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province, call themselves "Luoluo", or Hu people. The man is "Roropo", that is, the male tiger, and the woman is "Roromo", that is, the tigress. Every year, the "Luo Luo" people have to sacrifice tigers, dance the Eight Tigers Dance, and celebrate the eight-day grand Tiger Festival. As the ancestor deity, the tiger has deeply penetrated into the Yi culture. Expressing the reverence and courtesy of the tiger in the form of a carnival dance in the square has been a way of entertaining the gods since ancient times, in order to obtain the blessings of the gods and seek peace and prosperity.
3
Chonghu, Aihu and Baohu
The widely circulated cloth tiger is an important carrier of Chinese tiger culture, and the investigation and rescue of cloth tiger is also to retain the subject matter of Chinese tiger culture, so as to start studying the flow of Chinese tiger culture.
As a folk craft, cloth tiger culture involves cloth tiger handicrafts, as well as embroidery pieces, pendants, tiger shoes, tiger hats, etc. related to tiger culture, which can be said to have left a living fossil for Chinese tiger culture. Wearing a tiger-shaped hat and shoes is protected by the tiger, but also obtains the effect of "turning danger into disaster", obtains the strength of the tiger, and at the same time fears being eaten by the tiger, it can also gain good luck because it pleases the tiger. Human wisdom is vividly expressed in the folk.
On January 17, at the luoshe town center kindergarten in Deqing County, Huzhou City, Zhejiang Province, children wore tiger head hats made by themselves for a group photo
A song is widely circulated in Shandong: "Bao'er Bao'er, don't cry, make you a cloth tiger, play with it during the day, and eat hemp at night." "Legend has it that Mahu was very cruel, once steamed a child, and was a devil in the hearts of the people. Be a cloth tiger and put it next to the baby, and you can drive away evil spirits.
Shandong, Henan local folk cloth tiger shape, has a very significant feature, the tiger's eyebrows are mostly the shape of two mugwort leaves, which also has a certain relationship with wormwood can ward off evil spirits. In some places, the eyebrows of tigers are two opposite birds, for example, at the temple fair in huaiyang, the embroidery of tiger head shoes hand-embroidered by the old ladies has a pattern of two birds and two fishes, which is a metaphor for the combination of men and women and the reproduction of new life. The pisces in the eyebrows of Shaanxi Fengxiang tigers are hidden in strong colors and decorations, and it is not easy to find without looking closely. The cloth fish-tailed tiger in Yuncheng, Shanxi, not only has the shape of the tiger body and the tiger's tail as a fish, but also very obviously embroiders a large fish on both sides of the tiger's body, and the fish's tails intersect.
Analyzing the flow of Chinese tiger culture, it has gone through three stages: chonghu, loving tiger and protecting tiger.
The stage of worshiping tigers existed in the early days of human society, and people worshiped and admired the mountains and forests because of hunting life and fear of nature, and named tigers as mountain gods. Worshiping tigers because of fear of tigers is basically a helpless act of natural forces in human childhood. In the inability to conquer nature, the use of the power of nature to make human beings themselves get strong spiritual support, this is a psychological suggestive behavior. From the worship of dragons, bears, bats, toads and other animals, we can see the wisdom of folk survival. The so-called unworthy is to offer up and obtain inner peace.
On January 22, Shen Lili, a food artist from Huaibei City, Anhui Province, showed off her "Cute Tiger" flower bun
In the stage of loving tigers, dragons are the exclusive favorite of the royal nobility, and tigers are snubbed to the people, and the people seem to have enough ability to approach and get close to tigers. Therefore, people express their fearlessness and love for the tiger in various ways, wearing it on the child's head, stepping on the child's feet, wearing it on the child's body, pillowing under the child's head, and so on. This makes the tiger appear majestic but more than enough. It is the folk who dare to turn fierceness into tenderness, and the status of the tiger has changed from the totem on the altar in the past to the companion of children. But people still see him as a protective god in their bones, but they are more personified.
At present, it is the stage of protecting the tiger. Folk customs about tigers and the gradual disappearance of many tiger culture carriers show the urgency of rescuing, preserving and inheriting tiger culture. Of course, Chinese not only love the tiger, not only like the tiger festival, but also pay more attention to and love the king of the hundred beasts in the natural mountains and forests, and look forward to the new year. (The author is a professor, doctoral supervisor, poet and folklore scholar at the School of International Education, Tianjin University)
Source: Global Magazine