Source: Guangming Network
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Narrator: Wang Jie, Professor of the Philosophy Department of the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China
The fifth day of the first lunar month is an important festival in the Spring Festival customs. Su Shi of the Song Dynasty has a verse that reads, "The General East Wind is Broken Five". In the Ming Dynasty, there is a famous essay "Five Miscellaneous Tricks" that says: "Minzhong custom does not remove dung, until the fifth day of the first month, go to the wilderness, take the stone and return, the cloud 'get the treasure'". In most parts of China, on the fifth day of the first lunar month, there are customs of "breaking the fifth day", "sending the poor", and "receiving the god of wealth".
Break five
Folk customs, after the eighth year of Lapa is the year, on the one hand, we must make material preparations, on the other hand, we must inform the children of various taboos: you cannot say slander and lie; you cannot accidentally break the dishes and cups, and you must say "broken (age) peace"; you cannot curse and beat people, otherwise it will bring a year's obscurity and bad luck to the scolded; you cannot cook rice with raw rice and stir noodle soup, otherwise the land will become a knot (ɡē bā) land, affecting the harvest of the year; you cannot sweep the floor outwards and pour water, otherwise you will sweep away and pour out the wealth of the year You can't urge people to get up and do things, otherwise they will make the other party feel that they have been urged to do things for a year. These taboos last until the fifth day of the first lunar month.
On the fifth day of the first lunar month, the whole family will carry out a cleaning, and all the original taboos will be broken, so the fifth day of the first month is also called "breaking the fifth". As soon as the "breaking five" arrived, the taboo was lifted, which meant that the first stage of the Spring Festival activities was basically over. Because the taboo is broken on a special day, there must be a ritual, so in different areas of The Great River in China, people have formed different customs and habits according to their own wishes and needs, such as "sending the poor" and "receiving the god of wealth".
(2) Sending the poor
In traditional culture, brooms and brooms are tools for cleaning, and because they are associated with unclean things, they are also unclean. Astronomy refers to comets as "broom stars", and once they appear, they indicate that disasters will descend on the earth, so the folk call people or things that cannot bring good luck to people "broom stars". Folklore says that the first day of the New Year is the birthday of the broom, so the first day of the New Year is taboo to move the broom, otherwise it will attract a "broom star", sweep away the fortune, and attract obscurity.
Later, people popularized the taboo of the first day of the Chinese New Year, so that every household could not use a broom during the entire Spring Festival. Burning cinder, stove fire garbage, etc., must be accumulated, if sweeping, can only be swept from the outside to the inside, the meaning is "to attract wealth to enter", if the sweep is "sweeping money out of the door". The garbage swept together can not be dumped casually, can only be stored centrally, because the folk believe that things such as garbage and wastewater during the Spring Festival are stained with blessings, wealth and joy, throwing away garbage, dumping wastewater is throwing away blessings, wealth and joy, which is ominous and may lead to bad luck for a year.
But the accumulation of time for a long time naturally affects people's daily life, so it is not until the "fifth day" that these garbage can be swept out of the house, because after the fifth day, these accumulated garbage will become "poor soil" from blessings and wealth, and must be cleaned up and sent away immediately, so breaking the fifth is also called "sending poor soil", referred to as "sending poverty".
In some places, firecrackers are also set off while sweeping the floor, which means expelling all the unlucky and unsatisfactory things of the year and keeping them away from their homes.
On the mainland, the "Breaking Five" shows different forms of expression due to regional differences. In some areas, "breaking the five" and "sending poor soil" is the "five povertys," that is, driving away the "intellectual poor," "learning poor," "literary poverty," "life poverty," and "handing over the poor." The "five" of "breaking" refers to these five poor ghosts, which are called "sending the five poor." Folk believe that the five evil spirits will come to the folk with the gods in the nether realm of the Spring Festival, hiding in a secluded corner of the home waiting for an opportunity to make trouble and harm people, so every year when the "Breaking Five" is cleaned up, they take the opportunity to clean them out, throw them away with the garbage accumulated in the home, and then set off firecrackers to scare them away.
In some places, "sending poor soil" sends out "poor daughters-in-law" and "poor children". On the fifth day of the first lunar month in Shaanxi, people tie women with paper, called "five poor women" and "five poor women", and the women who are tied with paper are carrying paper bags, and people put the garbage accumulated from the first day of the first month into the paper bags carried by the women, together with the dirt and debris in the house, and send them to the wide place outside the gate, or blow them up with firecrackers, or burn them with fire, called "sending poor daughters-in-law's doors", also known as "sending poor soil".
Legend has it that when Jiang Ziya was canonized as a god, he named his wife a "poor god" and made him "see the broken and return". In order to prevent the "poor gods" from entering the door during the Spring Festival, the people hung red letters on the doors to frighten them and force the "poor gods" to return to the heavenly court early to avoid harming the human world. On the day of the "Fifth Break", the housewife of the house took off the hanging note on the door and threw it out or burned it, called "sending the poor god". The poor ghosts sacrificed in the Central Plains are called "poor sons". "Poor son" is a poor ghost that everyone fears, in order not to provoke him, the Central Plains folk do not sweep the floor during the Spring Festival, garbage gathered to the fifth day of the first month of the first month to give him, in order to smoothly let him leave his home, called "send poor son". After the Ming and Qing dynasties, the "poor ghost" was revered as the "poor god".
Producer: Li Fangzhou Zhang Yuexin