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The 15th Yuan Festival of the seventh month of the lunar calendar is a very special one of the traditional folk festivals in the mainland, because it is an important festival for Chinese to express filial piety and thoughts to the deceased parents and relatives. It combines the traditional Confucian "autumn taste" ritual, the cosmology of yin and yang in Zhou Yi, the Taoist belief in the three senses, and the Buddhist Obon Festival, which is a concentrated embodiment of Chinese filial piety culture and a current example of Chinese culture being inclusive and advancing with the times.
The Zhongyuan Festival that integrates the three religions
The Zhongyuan Festival also has the historical origin of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism.
According to the Confucian ritual system, autumn tasting sacrifices are performed on ancestors in autumn. "Tasting" means inviting ancestors to taste fresh grains that ripen in the autumn of that year. This is both a gratitude to the ancestors for a good harvest and a tribute to the ancestors for not daring to enjoy the food exclusively. The seventh lunar month of the Chinese Yuan Festival falls in autumn, so if you want to trace the earliest source of the Zhongyuan Festival, it is probably the autumn festival.
At the same time, the 15th day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar also has a special meaning in the Confucian Yixue. Han Dynasty Confucianism put forward the theory of "news trigram" through the study of the "yin and yang" thought of the "Zhou Yi". "Disappear" means weakening, "interest" means growth, and "news" refers to the ebb and flow of yin and yang qi in a year. Following this principle, Han dynasty scholars identified 12 special trigrams in the Zhou Yi, among which they represented the trigrams of the seventh month of the lunar calendar. The arrangement of trigrams is exactly the same as the top and the kun, the three yang and the three yin. This means that the seventh month of the lunar calendar is just at the position of equal division of yin and yang, which is the node of the balance of yin and yang in the year; At the same time, it is the starting point of yin and yang decay - the beginning of yin qi surpassing yang. The 15th day happens to be the middle of the seventh month of the lunar calendar, so the 15th of July is the most central point of the reversal of the trend of yin and yang growth and decline in the year, and since then, the yin qi has gradually flourished and the yang energy has gradually declined.
In the ancients' conception, a loved one who died had gone to Hades. Therefore, it is "just in time" to sacrifice relatives at the center of the yin and yang changes on the 15th day of the seventh lunar month.
With the development of Taoism since the Eastern Han Dynasty, the belief of the "Three Official Emperors" was born in Chinese. The three official emperors are Tianguan Emperor (blessing), Diguan Emperor (forgiveness), and Shuiguan Emperor (Xie), among which the birthday of the Diguan Emperor is the 15th Yuan Festival of the seventh lunar month - the name of the Zhongyuan Festival is also derived from this. Therefore, with the addition of the Taoist belief in the three officials, the sacrifice on the 15th day of the seventh lunar month has the meaning of praying for the blessing and forgiveness of sins of deceased ancestors so that they can live underground in peace.
Buddhism has a tradition of ending summer and living in peace, that is, when the summer rainy season arrives and plants and insects are at their peak, monks must stay in residence and concentrate on studying. After this custom spread to China, according to the characteristics of China's climate, the end time of the summer settlement coincided with the 15th day of the seventh lunar month. In turn, this custom is fused with another Buddhist legend, "Mu Lian Salvation Mother", so that there is the "Obon Festival" on the 15th day of the seventh lunar month that surpasses the deceased relatives.
From the perspective of the historical evolution of the Zhongyuan Festival, it not only has the cultural and religious origins of local Confucianism, but also integrates the relevant content of Buddhism, and in the long-term folk communication, it finally evolved into a folk festival with mourning, memorial, sacrifice, and saving deceased relatives as the main content, integrating the three religions.
It also has the filial piety culture of the Tongtian people
The complex Zhongyuan Festival is an important carrier of Chinese filial piety culture, and its core content is to mourn the deceased relatives, especially parents.
As an important part of China's excellent traditional culture, filial piety culture is based on the traditional clan concept of Chinese.
The "Legend of Zhou Yi Preface" says, "There is heaven and earth and then all things, there are all things and then there are men and women, there are men and women and then there are couples, and there are couples and then there are father and son." In Chinese tradition, the understanding of the individual person is premised on the family or family. According to the ancient philosophers, man must understand himself in the exploration of his own birth process. People naturally trace their definition of themselves back to the entire family, and more intuitively, everyone's existence is rooted in their parents. From this, "filial piety" gained a solid foundation. It is not only a simple natural emotion for parents and a series of behavioral norms, but also the greatest affirmation of ourselves as human beings in the expression of true affection for parents.
It can be said that the essence of filial piety is actually the essence of human beings, and Chinese become oneself in the practice of filial piety. It is precisely for this reason that the so-called filial piety embodies a kind of responsibility for one's own life in its bones. The Book of Filial Piety says: "Filial piety begins with one's relatives, begins with one's affairs, and finally stands oneself." It can be seen from this, on the one hand, that people's understanding of filial piety is completed in the practice of filial piety, which is performed filial piety; On the other hand, filial piety, as an ethical principle, is ultimately directed by one's own personality and career achievements.
Filial piety also has a strong transcendent meaning in Chinese culture. The Book of Filial Piety says: "Filial piety, the scripture of heaven, the righteousness of the earth, and the deeds of the people." In the concept of the ancients, filial piety was not only a part of the operation law of "heaven and earth", that is, the operation law of the universe, but also the code of conduct of "people", that is, people.
The ethics and transcendence of filial piety culture are fully reflected in the folk festival of Zhongyuan Festival. In terms of ethics, people should be filial to their parents; In terms of its transcendence, the ethical relationship between people and their parents is beyond reality, and this divinely given connection is not destroyed by the finite nature of life.
In September 2020, the Zhongyuan Festival ancestor worship activity was held in the Great Locust Tree Root-seeking Ancestral Garden in Hongdong County, Shanxi Province. (Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Ma Yimin)
Penetrate the religious concept of God and man
In addition to being an important carrier of filial piety culture, Zhongyuan Festival also embodies Chinese traditional religious concepts.
As a festival to mourn the deceased relatives, the establishment of the Zhongyuan Festival itself is the best footnote to Chinese religious concepts. For the ancients, almost all of the religious activities they participated in throughout their lives were related to ethics, and mourning and paying homage to their deceased relatives was the most important of them. It is precisely because of this that the religious concept of Chinese is filled with a kind of human warmth.
Chinese most common objects of worship and sacrifice are their parents, elders, and ancestors. Even those real "gods" will be interpreted by Chinese in every possible way as "parents" and "parents" and so on. For example, "Shangshu Tai Oath" says that "only the parents of all things in heaven and earth"; "The Legend of Zhou Yi Shugua" says, "Dry, heaven, so called the father; Kun, the earth, so it is called the mother"; In the old days Chinese almost every family worshipped the "king of the stove" and called him the "head of the family"; To this day, there is still the word "God" in people's colloquialisms. In the Chinese religious concept, the so-called ghosts and gods are actually an extension and sublimation of people's ethical relations. In addition to being objects of awe and worship, ghosts and gods are also our "parents", "relatives" and "ancestors". In fact, it is under the influence of such a concept that the Zhongyuan Festival was born and evolved to this day.
From the perspective of emphasizing the different aspects of "God" and "man", there must be special etiquette treatment. This led to the formation of special "rituals", emphasizing the separation of religious sacrifices from daily life. As stated in the "Book of Rites", the sacrifices of the Xia Dynasty mainly relied on the heat emitted after cooking the sacrifices to communicate with the gods, the sacrifices of the Shang Dynasty relied on music, and the sacrifices of the Zhou Dynasty relied on the aroma of wine. From the perspective of the festival customs of the Zhongyuan Festival, the offering of sacrifices obviously belongs to the deformation of incense sacrifice, burning paper money and gold drapery, which is born out of the sacrifice of hot gas (smoke), and as for customs such as releasing river lanterns and flame vents, they hardly appear in the rituals and behaviors of daily life. Therefore, the customs of the Zhongyuan Festival are essentially the product of the influence of the concept of "difference between gods and men" in Chinese.
Traditional festivals in intangible cultural heritage
Zhongyuan Festival, an ancient traditional festival, is now a national intangible cultural heritage, and the thousand-year-old tradition has a new taste.
Fengdu County, Chongqing Municipality will hold the 2023 Fengdu Zhongyuan Festival on August 30, covering five ceremonies: "ancestor worship in famous mountains, city god tour, ancestor worship ceremony, smoke and thoughts, and 10,000 people lighting lights". It is understood that the event will release 12 "prayer lanterns" with a diameter of 1.5 meters, another 10,000 "prayer lanterns" will be taken off along the river shoreline, and 200 UAV Kong Ming lanterns will be performed in linkage, sublimating good wishes into brilliant lights, allowing participants to feel the Chinese filial piety and benevolence culture and inherit the excellent traditional Chinese culture.
In the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the Teochew Obon Festival, also known as "Obon Festival", "Zhongyuan Festival", "Ghost Festival", "Magu Festival" or "Half of July", is a day to worship ancestors. The Chaoshan people living in Hong Kong have a history of more than 100 years, which is one of the most grand and large-scale folk events in Hong Kong. In May 2010, the Zhongyuan Festival (Teochew Obon Shenghui) was selected into the third batch of national intangible cultural heritage list.
The traditional folk custom "Resource River Lantern Festival" in Resource County, Guilin City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, originated from the shipping of the Zijiang River waterway, and originated from the Zhongyuan Festival, which is a ritual to worship ancestors and a unique act of mourning for the river workers, sailors and platoon workers who were killed. Fanghe lanterns include a series of activities such as ancestor worship, lantern making, lantern release, and wish-making, which not only have the folk characteristics of the Zhongyuan Festival, but also integrate the characteristics of local people's living customs. In 2014, Zhongyuan Festival (Resource River Lantern Festival) was selected into the fourth batch of national intangible cultural heritage list.
On the eve of the Zhongyuan Festival, 10,000 people in Zijiang Lantern Valley in Guilin Resource County, Guangxi Province prayed for blessings to float river lanterns together, reproducing the wonder of "10,000 river lanterns floating on the Zijiang River", and a variety of large and small river lanterns shone with each other, lighting up the night of Resource Mountain City with blessings. (Photo by China News Agency reporter Yang Zongsheng)
Every year on the 15th day of the seventh lunar month, Ejia Town, Shuangbai County, Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province, will hold the Zhongyuan Festival activities, on the basis of the masses spontaneously organizing Sheng song singing and self-entertainment, adding theatrical performances, song competitions, as well as spinning tops and grinding autumn performances, etc., to promote the inheritance, protection and development of local folk songs and dances. In October 2019, Ejia was included in the fifth batch of intangible cultural heritage list at the prefecture level.
In the face of this festival that comes with the autumn breeze, we should not only remember its original appearance, but also integrate its cultural memory and national emotions into our lives, so that the traditional virtues of the Chinese nation can adapt to the development of the times, and the festival that retains the roots of traditional culture has a unique style.
(This article was published in China Nationalities Daily on August 29, 2023.) ）
[The above content is the personal opinion of experts and does not represent the position of this platform.] 】
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