Intangible Cultural Heritage
The Spring Festival is one of the four traditional festivals in the mainland, also known as the lunar calendar year, commonly known as "New Year" and "New Year". According to records, Chinese people have a history of more than 4,000 years for celebrating the Spring Festival. The state attaches great importance to the protection of intangible cultural heritage, and on May 20, 2006, the "Spring Festival" folk custom was approved by the State Council to be included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage list.
Behind each Annual custom, there is a traditional "New Year's flavor", and the Memory of the Times launches a special New Year's chapter to sort out the folk skills that run through the New Year's customs for you, feel the charm of intangible cultural heritage, and taste the strong Taste of the New Year.
Face sculpture, commonly known as noodle flowers, buns, flower cakes, kneading people, is one of the traditional han folk arts originating from Shanxi, with glutinous rice noodles as the main ingredient, mixed into different colors, with hands and simple tools, to create a variety of lifelike images.
The face sculptors of the old society "only to make a living, tearfully walk around", pick up boxes, go to the countryside and towns, do it on the street, and are deeply loved by the masses, but their works are regarded as a kind of gadget, and they cannot be climbed on the hall of elegance.
Nowadays, the art of face sculpture is valued as a precious intangible cultural heritage, and gadgets have also entered the temple of art. Kneading artists, according to the needs of the material, in the hands of several pinching, rubbing, kneading, lifting, with a small bamboo knife deftly placed, cut, carved, scratched, shaped into a body, hands, head, draped in hair ornaments and clothes, in an instant, the vivid artistic image will be out of hand. In 2008, it was inscribed on the National Intangible Cultural Heritage List.
Heze face sculpture
Heze face sculpture has a long history and is famous throughout the country. Heze noodle sculpture is Caozhou noodle person. Heze ancient called Caozhou, located in the Yellow River Basin, often due to the Yellow River breach, natural and man-made disasters are almost continuous. In order to pray for the wind and rain to be smooth, people kneaded the noodles into pigs and sheep to worship the gods instead of slaughtered animals. This is the earliest face sculpture art among the Caozhou noodle people. For thousands of years, local noodle sculpture has undergone vicissitudes and ups and downs, and has risen and fallen several times.
Caozhou noodle people continue to develop and innovate, and have become a folk craft that integrates viewing and playing. In the process of the development of face sculpture art, Heze face sculpture artists went south to break into the north and influenced the whole country, as early as the twenties of the last century, Heze noodle people traveled all over Southeast Asia. Heze face sculpture has the characteristics of concise and vivid shape, vivid image, appropriate proportions, bright and simple colors, and has a strong folk flavor. While inheriting the traditional face sculpture of the older generation, it continues to develop and innovate, and the face sculpture works are rich and colorful, including flowers, birds, insects, fish, cartoon character zodiac signs, portrait sculpture and so on.
Huozhou face sculpture
Huozhou face sculpture, local people called "lamb bun", in ancient times, "sheep" is "auspicious", with the meaning of "auspicious". Before the Spring Festival, peasant women use the fine powder of the family to knead kittens, puppies, tigers, jade rabbits, chickens, ducks, fish frogs, grapes, pomegranates, eggplant, "Buddha's hand", "full of red", "QiaoGong Qiao Mother" face plastic products according to local customs, in order to symbolize all the best, more happiness and longevity, prosperity, harmony and friendship, and wish all the best.
During the "Cold Food" festival, the noodle molding type used by the people of Huoxian County to worship their ancestors is "snake plate plate". Some, there are also single-headed snakes and two-headed snakes. In the old folk customs, when worshipping ancestors, the younger generations ate the "snake head", which means "extinguishing the poisonous head and avoiding disasters". On the 15th day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar, Huo County has the largest number of types of face sculptures. There are pig heads, sheep heads, wheat straw sets, needle and thread baskets, thimbles, scissors, needles and threads, sitting feasts (which are shaped for women sitting on the lotus platform), lions, tigers, foxes and so on.
Xinzhou face sculpture
Xinzhou face sculpture is a traditional folk art living in this area. It is deeply hidden in the folk, rooted in the folk, and has become one of the local crafts. In the area around Xinzhou, during the Spring Festival, it is necessary to pay homage to the gods and make offerings. Before the Spring Festival, the dough is kneaded into offerings of various shapes such as bergamot, pomegranate, lotus, peach, chrysanthemum, and horseshoe. It is commonly known as "flower bun". Xinzhou flower bun, often inserted with red dates in the middle, is both decorative, but also a nutritional product, condiment, very popular.
There is also a large local offering called "Zaoshan Mountain". This kind of jujube mountain is rolled with red dates, spelled into an isosceles triangle, and the corner top is often shaped with a ruyi-shaped pattern, and three to five "small yuanbao" are added to the top, and at the same time, a "money dragon" for biting copper coins is also plasticized. After the "jujube mountain" is steamed, it can be colored and dyed, becoming a bright folk art.
During the Qingming Festival, a kind of noodle head called "cold food offering" is kneaded by the locals. This kind of noodle head, wrapped in oil, salt, millet and sesame seeds, is kneaded into the heads of male and female children, with red lotus beans as the mouth, black lotus beans as the eyes, plus the nose, ears, eyebrows, etc., steamed and dyed, very innocent and cute. Some also make a kind of "cold swallow", pinch the steamed cold swallow, and insert it on the sour date branch, much like a flock of swallows parked on the branches. In short, Xinzhou face sculptures are various, varied, colorful, and have become the Qingming Festival of folk works of art with aesthetic taste.
Daizhou face plastic
Dai Prefecture (绛州), or present-day Xindai County, was a county on the Jinnan Plain. This area is rich in wheat in history and has always been the source of wheat and cotton in Shanxi Province. Therefore, every New Year's Festival, every household here uses the finest wheat to grind into flour and knead a variety of noodles to celebrate the festival. Because the dough sculpture here pays attention to color dot dyeing and the flowers are gorgeous, the locals call it "flower bun".
Daizhou flower bun, the shape is more exaggerated, the shape is unique, especially the "beast flower bun" is the most outstanding. In the urban and rural areas of Daizhou, most housewives will knead the flower buns, and generally will knead a variety of ordinary shapes, because they are self-made, although the level is different, it does not affect the consumption, over time, some housewives can be skilled, and the level of kneading of the buns can be continuously improved. As a result of this kind of folk activity, which is carried out by every household, a large number of skilled craftsmen who knead flower buns have been created, and they have been passed down from generation to generation. Whenever urban and rural marriages are married, pinching flower buns will become an inevitable activity. Moreover, these flower buns will be displayed in front of the public, so as to get tasting, this kind of spontaneous mass evaluation that does not elect the champion has undoubtedly become a driving force to promote the kneading of flower buns, and has become a folk review to promote the continuous improvement of the level of facial plastic.
Shanxi face plastic
The customs that originated from the pre-Qin Chinese festivals and formed in the Han Dynasty are the accumulation of human understanding and conquest of nature. The Spring Festival is a key festival in people's understanding of the phenological calendar, so the sacrifice of the Spring Festival is particularly solemn, and the exquisite face sculpture comes into being with people's psychological needs and becomes an important form of expression of the festival. The main function of the Spring Festival Shanxi folk face sculpture is to sacrifice and pray to heaven, earth and gods, and is the embodiment of the ideal of pursuing abundant food and clothing and all the best.
The face sculpture of the Spring Festival is mostly abstract, religious and idealistic in terms of modeling consciousness. The offerings to heaven and earth are called Zaoshan Mountain, and the gods of Vesta are called Rice Mountain and Flower Cake, and the shape is larger, which is called rice noodles into mountains, and the legend of Jinnan is made to commemorate the great Yu Zhishui. The ancestral spirit of a sheep in front of the animal sacrifice is a custom of animal sacrifice to show piety. The elders send their children and grandchildren "Qian Long" with the intention of luring Qian Long into the palace and attracting wealth into treasure.
In addition, a variety of colorful steamed buns with flowers are exquisite gifts for guests to visit relatives and friends. The jujube mountain used by the people of northern Jin for the gods is quite exquisite. This is because it appeared as a sacrifice. It is believed to have some mysterious power beyond the self, a bridge between man and God. When making, the good noodles are rolled into a large triangle, covered with a layer of red dates, and then made of noodles into panyun, panlong, pan rabbit, ruyi pattern, and occasionally embellished with Lianli, Yuanbao, Xiashan tiger, Shangshan deer, melon and fruit, etc., with grains and grains dotting the nose, steaming out of the pot, miany and green, the white noodles and crimson dates, colorful grains, beans form the overall contrast effect on color. (Contributed by Wan Hong)