Every year after the Mid-Autumn Festival, Wu Donghua began to select bamboo to prepare for the Lantern Festival. Bamboo that is three or four years old is the most suitable for making flower lanterns, and the new bamboo that was born in the same year is not enough, at least it must be long for one and a half years, so as to ensure the flexibility of the bamboo fence. Bamboo should be straight and less knotted, which can save a lot of work. Tie flower lantern is pure manual work, raw materials are not selected well to spend more time to correct, so in the entire production process, the selection of materials and preparation of the longest time, formal tie does not take too long, from the skeleton to the final completion, a skilled lantern maker about four or five days can do a good job.
Wu Donghua opened a paper shop in Xingning Ningxin Street, Guangdong Province, mainly to tie and sell Xingning flower lanterns, Guanyin lamps, and also to sell incense candles and other paper ties, and the business is still quite passable. Hakka Lantern Festival, customs are very different from other folk families, as a Hakka township, Xingning area from about the eighth day of the first month, with the surname clan as the unit in turn to hold the "lantern viewing" ceremony, until the end of the nineteenth day of the first month. Wax moon is the peak sales period of Wu Donghua's shop, with the gradual increase in the number of people who customize flower lanterns, Wu Donghua and his wife are busy without touching the ground - racking, paper cutting, paste paste, paste paper (gold paper, red paper and color paper), painting, writing, cutting and pasting, paper dolls, making white flowers and safflowers, etc., each step can not be vague, some customers put forward special requirements, Wu Donghua does not discount, all meet one by one. "Viewing the lanterns is a big thing, and the lanterns are pinned on people's wealth, luck and the blessings of Tim Ting, how can they be treated casually?" He said. It shows the general understanding of the Xingning people for flower lanterns.
Pan'an Hakka House in Hexi Village, Yetang Town, Xingning City, Guangdong Province (Zhang Yonglin/Photo)
Xingning flower lanterns are mainly only popular in the Xingning area, because of the special meaning of "Tim Ding", as early as the Yuan Dynasty, the Lantern "Lantern Appreciation" custom was derived, which has been handed down for more than 600 years, and has produced a flower lantern making family that has been passed down from generation to generation, such as the flower lantern Zhang in Xingtian Street, the Panshiwei in Longtian Town, the flower lantern house in Gancun Village in Luogang Town, the Wu House in Diaofang Town, the Flower Luo House in Hualuodun Luowu, etc., the history is more than 200 years, and the longest inheritance has exceeded 500 years. In the Qing Dynasty, with the fourth and fifth population migration of the Hakka people, the Xingning lantern was transmitted from Xingning to Huiyang, Tamsui, Heyuan, Longmen, Lianping, Wengyuan and other places of Hakka settlement, as well as Guangxi and Sichuan, and became a local custom.
Wu Donghua comes from a family that makes flower lanterns. For the children of the lamp-making family, making flower lanterns is not a matter that needs to be specially learned, from a young age, in the process of helping the adults in the family to lay hands, muscle memory has long been formed, and it will naturally occur. On Guanshan Fourth Road, where Wu Donghua opened shops, several similar paper shops were connected in a line, all of which were opened by their Wu people, and the situation was more or less the same in other villages and towns. Because when asking for lights, you must set off firecrackers, beat gongs and drums, dance dragons and lions all the way, the flexible store simply arranges gongs and drums, dragons and lions together, and the signs on the red background are matched with colorful lion heads and dragon heads placed at the door, which looks lively and joyful.
The winter light dimmed early, in the lighted shop, Wu Donghua was tying the skeleton of the flower lamp, and the back of his left hand was pasted near the tiger's mouth, which was convenient for using it at any time when making the flower lamp; his brother Wu Guohua, a well-known lantern artist in Xingning, sat next to drinking tea, and the two discussed from time to time how to tie two sentences. Hanging at the entrance of the shop are two or three skeletons of flower lanterns that have been tied up, hexagonal structure, about 60 cm high, 80 cm in diameter, three floors from the inside to the outside, from top to bottom five floors, is the traditional flower lantern shape of Xingning folk, called "Daling Flower Lantern", specially used for the Lantern Festival.
Xingning Flower Lantern (Zhang Yonglin/Photo)
In terms of fineness, the production process of Xingning flower lanterns is not exquisite, but because it is pinned on multiple wishes such as Tim Ding, seeking children, praying for blessings, fortune, peace, etc., the color, decoration and pattern of the flower lanterns are very complicated, taking the Daling flower lanterns made by Wu Guohua, the upper and lower five layers of structure are exquisite. The uppermost layer is the selection of the shape of the lotus petals, each lotus petal is decorated with multicolored lotus flowers, called "Ang Yun"; the second layer is called "Golden Dragon Tengyun", each side is based on red paper, affixed with gilded golden dragon patterns, and modified by colored paper cuts and patterns in the skeleton position. The third layer is the main body of the flower lamp, generally made into three layers inside and outside, the outer layer is a thick lamp post, wrapped in red paper or gold leaf; the middle layer is hollowed out, made into the shape of a pavilion, representing a peaceful and happy industry; the inner layer is hollow to install lamps, the surface pattern can be flexibly changed according to the craftsman's production habits or customer requirements, the content includes fat dolls, Zhuangyuan, Xianguan and other characters, dragons, phoenixes, lotuses, peonies and other auspicious patterns, as well as "people prosper, auspicious, Wishing you prosperity" and other auspicious words, to painting, calligraphy, paper-cutting, collage, Paper ties and other forms of expression. The fourth layer of the flower lantern style is roughly the same as the second layer, the golden dragon (phoenix) with a red background, called "dragon and phoenix xiang", symbolizing human reproduction, descendants and grandchildren; the fifth layer is a piece of enclosed red cloth, which is "lamp skirt", can be brought or not, the flower lamp with skirt is called "skirt lamp", and what is not brought is called "flower lamp".
After the decoration of the whole flower lamp, it is also necessary to "add white flowers", which is the soul of the Xingning flower lamp, and it is also its distinctiveness. In the Xingning area, the white flowers represent the boys, there are male dings born in the family, called "Tim White Flowers", to find the master who makes the lanterns to make the lanterns, during the Lantern Festival in the coming year, the lanterns will be invited back to the ancestral house to hold a "lantern ceremony" to report to the ancestors on the happy events of the family. Therefore, the lanterns of the Lantern Festival should be decorated with white flowers, and the more white flowers are embellished, the more auspicious they are, indicating that the family melon is stretching and the people are prosperous.
The Xingning Hakka family held a "lantern raising" ceremony in the ancestral house. (Zhang Yonglin/Photo)
There are many types of Xingning lanterns, and the lanterns used in the Lantern Festival have their own characteristics according to the different regions and lamp-making families, which can be regarded as a brand identity. For example, Chen Foguang, a non-hereditary heir of Daping Town, is good at tying dragon and phoenix flower lanterns; the rock wall flower lantern is known for its dynamics, the outer layer of the flower lamp is hung with silk thread, such as yuanyuan, bang eye, tanhua and other small paper people, the two ends of the silk thread are connected with the motor inside the lantern, when the motor starts to drive the silk thread to roll, the small paper person on the silk line will move up and down, full of fun at the same time, the transmission is the positive attitude of life when working hard to operate.
The most special is the fireworks spark lamp in the flower screw dun Luo House, the red barrel-shaped flower lamp looks simple and unpretentious, and the mystery is all inside the barrel. Some areas of Xingning will accompany the grand "fireworks burning" activities when the "warm lantern ceremony" (that is, the flower lantern ceremony) is carried out, and the protagonist is the fireworks and spark lamps. This flower lamp generally has five layers, folded inside the barrel. There are leads at the bottom of the barrel, and when it is burned, a team of people beat gongs and drums, a team of people light the leads, and a team of people are responsible for pulling the ropes and pulling the fireworks rack up and down. Only to see the red flames, the flower lanterns fly up and down, the internal shape with the advancement of the combustion layer by layer, the second revealed its true appearance, the fireworks scenery constantly changing, the glittering, the Hakka celebration of Tim Ting's joy to the climax.
Hang high flower lanterns, and then pray for blessings and ancestors. (Zhang Yonglin/Photo)
The fifteenth o'clock of the first month originated from the Han Dynasty's lantern worship activities, developed into a lamp market through the Tang Dynasty, and spread throughout the people in the Song Dynasty, becoming a folk activity commonly spread in traditional Chinese farming society, entertaining the gods and entertaining people at the same time. In the areas where Hakka people gather, such as Xingning, Meizhou, Heyuan, Lianping, Huizhou, etc., the Lantern Festival is even more important than the New Year, in addition to containing the meaning of seeking wealth, transfer, peace and so on, because the Hakka dialect "lamp" and "Ding" homophonous, "appreciation of lights" harmonic "Shangding", so the Lantern Festival is also one of the ceremonies of the newborn male entering the clan. From the perspective of modern people, the Hakka Lantern Festival is too patriarchal, but looking back at the history of the formation of the Hakka folk system, it is not difficult to understand the Hakka people's attachment to people.
The Hakka are a unique ethnic group in China, which was formed in the process of large-scale population migration in ancient China. In the history of China, there have been six large-scale population migrations, from the Qin to the Qing, almost each time accompanied by wars and social unrest, the Han people from the Central Plains, in order to avoid military disasters and wars, in the thousand-year-long time sequence, successively moved south, traveled thousands of miles, spread in Henan, Hubei, Jiangxi, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Hainan, Taiwan and overseas and other places, and initially formed the Hakka people during the Southern Song Dynasty. "There are old tribes in the Central Plains, migrating famous guests. Cross the river into Bamin, and turn to the seashore. "It is a highly generalized version of the history of the Hakka.
Initially, for the indigenous people who moved in, the outsiders who came from afar were uninvited guests who competed for their land, and the division between "main nationality" and "guest nationality" aggravated hostility and conflict, and in order to gain a foothold in unfamiliar lands, the weak "guest" ethnic groups urgently needed to strengthen the population, especially the strong young men, in order to compete with the local indigenous people and seek the right to subsistence. In the context of the traditional society that pays attention to the "relocation of the land" and the "concept of the countryside", this group of people who are forced to leave their homeland have experienced the pain of the separation of their relatives and the hardships of living in other places in the turmoil, and these common memories have almost become a kind of DNA, which is deeply rooted in the bones and blood of the Hakka, making them pay special attention to the reproduction and growth of the family, thus forming a special cultural custom. Appreciating the lights and asking for children and celebrating new students is the externalized expression of this demand.
Xingning Longlingwei (Zhang Yonglin/Photo)
At the end of the year, by the beginning of the seventh and eighth grades, there are clans who have booked flower lanterns to "ask for lights". According to the custom, all the clans that had a baby boy born in the previous year, the father of the newborn must go to the lantern maker to make a lantern, so that the lantern festival can be lit up the following year; if there are many new Dings added to the clan that year, the family that was the first to add Ding Ding is the "Ding Head", and several families jointly bear the cost of making lanterns and lantern viewing activities. Theoretically, there are several male dings born to make a few flower lanterns, but considering the cost problem, and the space in the ancestral hall of the ancestral house where the flower lantern is hung, it is usually custom-made to make a large flower lamp, and the specification is appropriate to be able to fully carry the door of the ancestral house, in addition, the larger the better. The lantern is decorated with heavy light strips, one lamp belt represents a new Ding, and there are several light strips with several new Ding.
In Xingning, the lantern viewing days of each surname are different, such as Li's is the eleventh day of the first month, Huang is the twelfth of the first month, Luo's is the fourteenth day of the first month, and so on. At that time, in addition to the clan, other relatives and friends with the same surname or foreign surname will also prepare gifts to come to congratulate - one day to a certain village and a certain house to admire the lights, Xingning people remember it clearly, and they will never make a mistake.
On the morning of the lantern viewing day, the young men from the same village organized by the Xinding family, with the gong and drum team and the dragon lantern lion dance team, set off firecrackers, beat gongs and drums, dance dragons and lions all the way, and went to the craftsmen who tied the lanterns to "ask for lights" in a lively way. "Please lamp" pays attention to the sound of firecrackers continuously, the sound of cannons is louder, and the more prosperous people are; when "please lamp" returns to pass through people with the same surname, the other party will set off firecrackers in front of their own doors, one to express congratulations, and the other to dip into joy and take good luck home. This is a custom of the past. In recent years, with the concept of environmental protection deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, the "please lamp" has been changed to be sent by the lantern maker to about 200 meters away from the ancestral house, and then welcomed back by the lantern team.
Put Kong Ming Lantern (Zhang Yonglin/Photo)
The details of the lantern viewing day ceremony of different clans are slightly different, but they are roughly divided into three ceremonies: "please lamp", "raise the lamp" and "warm lamp". Please return the flower lantern first not to be hung in a hurry, but to place it under the main beam of the upper hall of the ancestral house, and then raise the lamp when it is auspicious. During the time of waiting for the lantern to be raised, the village was full of high-level friends, dragons and lions dancing, drums and cannons sounding in unison, it was not lively.
The "Lantern Raising" ceremony is the culmination of the Festival of Lights. Some villages will "grab the white flowers" before the lights are raised, the white flowers represent the male Ding, and the people who grab the white flowers mean that the rich dings are prosperous; some villages will put the "snatching the white flowers" after the warming ceremony. When the auspicious time came, the "new Ding" was carried by his parents or grandparents to the ancestral hall, burned incense to the ancestors, reported the name of the newborn and the eight characters of the birthday, in order to ask the ancestors to bless, the ceremony was completed, the head of the lantern club commanded the person to hang the flower lantern to the beam of the upper hall of the ancestral house, at the same time, the firecrackers sounded in unison, and the dragon lantern lion team danced around the lantern. Each family must also take the firecrackers from the ancestral hall to the home, and those who live a little farther away must arrange for someone to pick them up on the road, and make sure that the firecrackers are released all the way home and cannot be interrupted. After the lantern raising ceremony, the village will set up a feast for relatives and friends to drink "new Ding wine", and in the evening, there will be movies, dragon and lion dances, singing Hakka mountain songs, and playing Kong Ming lanterns.
Times are changing, and trains are speeding past the houses under the Xingning Red Ridge. (Zhang Yonglin/Photo)
Generally speaking, the lanterns will be hung until the next year's lantern viewing day, and the new lanterns will replace the old ones, which has the meaning of generational change, but some villages only hang for a few days, and around the eighteenth day of the first month, a grand "warm lamp" ceremony will be held, with three sacrifices, incense candles, wine and other sacrifices, and the flower lanterns will be lowered and put down. During the warm lighting period, a "drinking lamp wine" banquet will be held, and the seats will pay attention to the seniority, and the senior and the elderly will sit in the right position on it, which is called "sitting on the horizontal"; and those young people who have a successful career and honor the elderly will also have the opportunity to be arranged in the right position and become a model of rural indoctrination.
After drinking the "drinking lantern wine", it means that after the New Year, the Hakka family who returned to their hometown embarked on the journey again, with the dream of getting ahead, they went to other places to work hard, waiting for the arrival of the next Lantern Festival.
Li Ruoxuan