There is a record of a folk competition in 1927 in the Suzhou "Book Town Chronicle":
There will be thirty-six horses on the road, guided by Pan Chunsheng's palm road map. Then the band played, a group of eight people, there are huqin, bamboo flute, gong and other instruments. Then there are Nanzhuwu, Qiaoqiao and other villages known as seventy-two yellow horse pedals, followed by the sixteen pure white Luan driving horses in the Yangjia Village area, and the seven first five pure color escort horses, the horse team is spectacular and vast. Among them were ten jujube red horses, and the riders were dressed in one outfit, holding tiger head cards.
At the same time, the Wudi custom magazine "Dianshizhai Pictorial" also recorded the situation of the Liansidang Water Race at the junction of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and the picture caption reads:
Jiaxing Beixiang is even four swings, and those who come to the meeting from near and far, there are no less than 4,000 or 5,000 giant boats, from Wang Jiangjing Changhong Bridge to the temple more than ten miles in front of the temple, moored like scales.
There are about 800 large ships with masts high, 24 steamships, three other Hankou ships, one each from Qingdao and Hong Kong, and the rest of the small net boats and civilian ships.
Coincidentally, the main god of these two kinds of meetings on land and water is the same person, Liu Meng, the god of locust repellent in Jiangnan. At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic of China, the worship of this folk locust repellent god reached its peak. The situation of the fierce general is unprecedented, taking the fierce general recorded in the "Chronicle of the Book Town" as an example, directly spending nearly 20,000 silver dollars. In the thirty-sixth year of the Republic of China (1947), as many as 183,000 pig heads were used in the net boat club, and in April of the 37th year of the Republic of China (1948), there were "500,000 people who paid homage to each other", and the yarn hat dedicated to Liu Wang was "worth six or two gold". The belief and worship of the people of Jiangsu and Zhejiang towards General Liu Meng can be seen.
General Liu Meng, the god of locust repellent
See the early locust gods from the Eight Wax Festival
The belief in the god of locust repellent can be traced back to the wax festivals of the Zhou Dynasty. In ancient times, there were eight wax temples, which were called large wax during the week. In the old days, in the month of Jianhai (December) every year, when agricultural production was suspended and the people's livelihood was resting, the gods were sacrificed to pray for a good harvest in the coming year. The so-called eight waxes are the eight kinds of gods: one is the Xianxi, that is, Shennong; the second is the Sishi, that is, houji, the agricultural official of Shun; the third is the farmer, that is, the ancient field; the fourth is the postal table, the postal table is the field house, the table is the field road, and the tree is the boundary of the field and the soil; the fifth is the cat and tiger; the sixth is the fang, that is, the embankment; the seventh is the water yong, that is, the ditch; the eighth is the insect, that is, the genus of locust borer. This is the worship and sacrifice of various gods closely related to agriculture in ancient society.
The Book of Rites contains a poem by Yi Qi's "Wax Words": "The earth is against its house!" The water is back! Insects don't do it! The grass and trees belong to their zeal! Dirt against its home! The water is back! Insects do nothing! A good year is like a soil, and the years are taken by thousands! "In the words is a prayer to the insects not to harm the crops. In the ancient agrarian society, the productivity was low, the fate of the people and the country was completely tied to the rise and fall of agriculture, and although insects were small, sometimes the disasters it brought to agriculture could be said to be devastating, the typical of which was the locust plague. Chen Zhengxiang counted the number of locust plagues recorded in various local chronicles in "Chinese Cultural Geography", and outlined the distribution of locust plagues in China, which is mainly north and south. Chen Fangsheng of the Qing Dynasty said in his "Examination of Catching Locusts": "The place where locusts are born, according to the locusts, will be born at the end of Daze, but there are no locusts next to Dongting, Pengli, and Guqu (Taihu Lake). There must also be places that suddenly dried up, such as the counties south of Youzhuo, north of Changhuai, west of Qingyan, and east of Liang and Song. The book lists a case of the Great Locust in Shandong in the fourth year of Tang Kaiyuan, "the people worship and worship, sit and watch the seedlings, and dare not catch", which is a typical example of the people's view of locusts as gods.
Map of locust plague in China
In fact, in the Eight Wax Sacrifice, the action of the insects is also out of helplessness, just like the sacrifice of the ghost and the plague god, which is a last resort. Insects are an important factor leading to agricultural production reduction and disasters, agricultural society is limited by various technical means, once the climate is suitable for the breeding of harmful insects, in the face of thousands of pests that cover the sky, manpower is very small, the people in the face of such sudden natural disasters are often helpless, most of the time can only let it wreak havoc. Ancient scholars also had a relatively fierce discussion on the issue of insects, and in Qian Daxin's "Collection of Hidden Research Halls", there is a question and answer "Eight Wax God", asking: The god of eight waxes, the families say differently. Zheng Kangcheng said that Xian Xi one, Si Xi two, Nong THREE, Postal Table Four, Cat Tiger Five, Fang Six, Shui Yong Seven, Insect Eight also. Wang Su divided the cats and tigers into two and went to the insects, Chen Xiangdao went to the insects and increased the number of hundreds, and Lü Dalin went to the first and the insects and increased the hundred species, and divided the cats and tigers into two. Or there are sub-mail tables for two and go to insects. Where to go? Qian Daxin gave his own views on the pest of locusts, "Zheng Kangcheng and Cai Zhonglang used insects as one of the eight waxes, which is not without signs. Or it is said that insects harm crops, and they are not often sacrificed in ceremonies. To say that people and things are one, people die as ghosts, and ghosts have returned, then they are not strong, so Tai. Li Gong, Li Clan, Li Zhi Qi, the first king lifted up and did not abolish. If the crops of the borers and locusts are also born of political losses, there will be gods who will do it. Sacrifices, the people of the lord know what to be vigilant, and the little people are not afraid, so the eight waxes are finally insects. Qian's dialectical attitude examined the rationality of the insects, although contrary to the purpose of the "Ritual Sacrifice Law" that "the law is applied to the people, the death is dedicated, the country is worshiped, the country is worshiped, the great calamity is enshrined, and the locust sacrifice is also the same.
General Liu Meng: A typical example of the folk locust repellent god in Jiangnan
In the Han and Tang dynasties, the wax festival activities were officially valued, but in the Ming and Qing dynasties, they continued to decline.
During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the folk records of locust repellent gods have been very rich, and there are "locust drought Danyang people locusts with cattle and cattle to worship the great king locusts that are less than five trees in the bamboo tree Linglu". The Book of Hidden Books records that "wherever there are locusts, the Golden Maiden's female title unveils the pole and sacrifices the locusts, and there is a paper horse in Chongzhen." The Chronicle of Zhenjiang Province has "God descended on the liyang people's house, and the golden altar ge zijian." This year, the drought locusts were tortured, and the emperor ordered me to drive them away, and the locusts were so large that they filled the forest. The people began to be afraid, and the great book said: the god of driving away locusts. The people fought for chicken wine, and the locusts flew away. "Jingxi County Chronicle" has the legend that "the Taihu Temple is commonly known as the Wang Erxianggong Temple in Wuxi Harbor, a mountainous area in the southeast of the county, and the gods have the miracles of driving locusts into the reeds". "Suzhou Fuzhi" also has the Chenghua Zhongwu County Chaozhen Palace Daoist Good Spell, taste the locust to control the demon, with prayer records, these gods and men are countless, commonly found in Fang Zhi's notes, the most typical of which is the locust exorcism god Liu Meng, and the ancient wax sacrifice has rarely been seen in Jiangnan.
"Qing Jia Lu" "Sacrifice of fierce generals" Articles have "(first month) On the thirteenth day of the official government to sacrifice General Liu Meng's birthday, tourists gathered in the auspicious temple, burning copper candles in the middle of the second, half a moon began to extinguish, it is common to call the big candles can drive away locusts, the weather drought prays for rain, for the blessing of the acres, the hometown people are particularly heartbroken, before and after a few days of the villagers to pay homage to the sacrifices, like the gods of the fierce generals, called to treat the fierce generals. The peasants in the area of Qionglong Mountain will run like a fly, and they will fall for pleasure, not for slow blasphemy, and their name is "Rolling Fierce General". ”
Lift the general
The identity of the fierce general God has different origins. The Ming Dynasty Wang Ao's "Zhenze Compilation" has: the fierce general Song Zhifeng Yang Wei Marquis, or Yun, the famous Song general Liu Kun. Di Rui tasted as a pioneer, trapped the enemy and the defenders also. Guangxu's "Suzhou Fuzhi" said that the mengjun temple was built in Songxianzhou Lane, Middle Street Road.
In the 25th year of the Kangxi Dynasty, Tang Wenzheng destroyed the Wudi Wutong, Wuxian, Liu Meng, Wufang Xiansheng and other obscene shrines, and the mountains above the stone were passed through the province. Li Weijun, the governor of Kang's fifty-eighth year, restored Liu Meng's sacrifice, which he said was a divine revelation he received when he asked for a spiritual incarnation in the fifty-ninth year of the Kangxi Dynasty. In the second year of Yongzheng, Li informed the imperial court with his deeds, and the imperial court included General Liu Meng in the ceremony and demanded that all prefectures and counties build temples for worship. Daoguang gave a plaque in the fourth year of the imperial letter, Xianfeng seven years sealed the word "Baokang", eight years gave a plaque, issued a direct provincial system of gonghang, tongzhi four years of the seal of the word "Puyou". However, the claim that Liu Chengzhong, the commander of Wuchuan, was obtained through the séance of the gods was indeed absurd and insufficient. Fierce generals sacrificed to the Song and Ming dynasties, and the People of the Yuan Dynasty, which is unbelievable. There are a large number of records in the Qing people's notes that Liu Meng was a general of Liu Kun, who was a famous general in the Southern Song Dynasty, along with Yue Fei and Han Shizhong, and had his personal biography in the "History of Song", which repeatedly fought against Jin Bing. After the ruler of the Qing Dynasty was the Jin people, the Qing Taizu Nurhaci unified the Jurchens and established the Houjin. The Qing dynasty rituals listed famous generals who resisted the Jin Dynasty were mostly violated, so They used Liu Chengzhong, an anti-Yuan general, to replace them, and for the people, the objects of the rituals had no impact on their folk religious activities, but the government often used orthodox and obscene rituals to judge the legitimacy of folk religious activities. However, the official actions of the Qing Dynasty enabled Liu Meng's faith to spread nationwide under the official impetus, and General Liu Meng was also justifiably enshrined in the Northern Eight Wax Temple. Influenced by the customs of the north and the south, the sacrifice of Liu Meng in the north is basically an official act, while in the south, the government and the people are both held together, which is very lively. The Fierce General Hall in the Jiangnan area can be seen everywhere, and the fierce general is a collective cognition in the life of the people, so that when the meeting period comes, the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions will hold a large-scale competition in either the town as the unit or the county as the unit. The folk belief that the fierce general God is a very close child. In Jiangsu and Zhejiang, there are "Fierce General Treasure Scrolls" and "Fierce General Divine Songs", and the earliest versions are the "Heavenly Cao Fierce General Treasure Scrolls" of qianlong. The images of the fierce generals depicted in it are children, barefoot, red cloth with heads, and holding swords. Folk call him King Liu barefoot. Because he is a child, in folklore, Liu Meng often appears as a naughty and cute child, so that the people smash the gods and dolls during the games, and the gods do not care.
Jiangsu and Zhejiang will meet on land and water
The land of fish and rice in Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions is rich in economy, and the people actively participate in the folk competition, during which all kinds of trade can be carried out freely, and the people's agricultural tools, daily necessities, and native products can be circulated at this time. The holding of the tournament formed incense markets in various places, increasing the vitality of the local economy.
In 2018, the last shirtless fierce general in Jiangjia Village, Xukou Town, Suzhou
The fierce generals in the countryside of Wudi are more typical of the fierce generals at the foot of the Mudu Dome Mountain and the net boat association of Lian Sidang at the junction of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. The former is mainly attended by farmers, while the latter is mainly composed of fishermen. The situation of both meetings can be seen in historical materials, especially the Liansidang Network Boat Association, which has been reported by the Republic of China newspapers and periodicals many times. Let's review both of these scenarios.
In the villages in the southeast of the Dome of the Mountain, the Villages of the Dome of the Mountain will be held once every seven years. It joined forty villages, about 1,000 households, divided into seventy-two sections; Mudu District and Shanrenqiao District each accounted for half. The situation at the time of the exit was beyond the reach of any tournament in the southwest of Sioux City. As far as horses alone are concerned, there are more than 200 horses, which are hired from Kunshan, Wuxi, Taicang and other places. The length of the honor guard can be five or six miles, and the number of participants is about 4000 or 5000. It is time for farmers to quit in the wilderness, merchants to slack off in the city, and thousands of people to empty the alleys, scrambling to see it; it takes three days: the first day to walk the bridge of the good people, the second day to walk the wooden tree, the third day to walk the fragrant mountain, the honor guard, the household burns incense, and it is pious. The idol in the meeting is said to be the general general, and the fierce generals everywhere are under his jurisdiction, and the villagers respect him as the old bodhisattva.
In the following year of the meeting, fu had to perform a drama for three days, which was called "inviting the old bodhisattva to watch the play", when the men and women of the villages, with the old and the young, scrambled to get the first, and the crowd was abnormal. The direct consumption of the two years must reach more than 20,000 gold; the purpose of the meeting is to pray for the safety of the people, hoping that the wind and rain will be smooth within seven years. The organization of the so-called seventy-two sections of the meeting still has the meeting of the main section of the section: the village of the main section, who presides over the affairs of the meeting on a rotating basis; the village of the section can only assist in the affairs of the meeting. Liu Meng will not provide for the temple, take turns to sit in the "seven duan" people's home, the head of the rotating household is called "Duantou", Duantou is generally served by the village chief, and the ability to do things is relatively strong. The honor guard identified by each family also has the basis of old accounts and cannot be easily changed, if the strength cannot be borne, although it is willing to sell the land through debt. Every year, the head of the seventh duan walks the green shoots meeting three days before the autumn, and the thirteenth day of the first month is the birthday of the fierce general, and the sitting section must wait for the fierce general to "hand over the paragraph". Scattered paragraphs can be posted to make an appointment for the New Year. At that time, the name of the church and the xuanhua literary and art class will be invited to perform, and relatives and friends will be invited to eat "fierce general wine". Generally speaking, the next year will be a drama to reward the gods for thanking duan.
At the beginning of the preparations for each meeting, about the fifth day of the first month of the first lunar month, the seven duantou initiated, discussed with the villagers the date of the meeting, counted three auspicious days, and then went to the old bodhisattva to ask for a signature, and chose one, that is, as the date of the start of the meeting. And the villagers, divided into villages to sound the gong notice, although the midnight night, the sound of the gong is not stopped, and then the villages will sound the gong in agreement, and the family will need the necessary items when preparing for the meeting.
On the day of the meeting, the idol must be carried to the Lingyan Mountain to open the light, which is presided over by the head of the idol, and the honor guard is also held by the village, which is extremely simple, and is commonly known as "Qing Daozi". At the end of the meeting, the idol is carried from the original Duantou family to the Duantou family in another village, and the following year, the drama is presided over by the villagers of the village. Later, with the depression of the national economy, it was discontinued in 1937. Until the 1990s, along with the declaration of non-governmental intangible cultural heritage, the general was also restored with the enthusiastic support of the villagers.
The activities of the people on the shore of the Jiangnan River have a long history, and the grandeur of the fierce generals competition has reached the extreme among the fishermen in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. In the middle and late Qing Dynasty, Jiaxing Liansidang, at the junction of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, was large due to its large water surface, convenient mooring for boats, and according to traffic fortresses, fishermen all made respectful offerings to the gods in this place. The surrounding fishermen gather lotus sidang as a shrine every year on the thirteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar to entertain their protector, the "Puyou Heavenly King". The fishermen of the Liansidang Net Boat Association are mainly from Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Shanghai, they row their own fishing boats to the Mengjiang, and the fishermen are divided into various associations according to the type of net boats and fishing work in the region, including the Yangzhou Gang of picking screws, the Dock Gang of Shanghai, the Taihu Lake Gang of Suzhou, and the Xinghua Gang of Northern Jiangsu, of which the silk net boat fishermen are the most, so people also call this water race "Net Boat Club". The Net Boat Association arose around the time of the Qing Dynasty. The Wenchuan Zhi Manuscript of the third year of the Qing Dynasty (1911) states: "My folk customs began to be printed on the twentieth day of the first month, and on the fourteenth day of August, the birthday of the Jiangsu and Zhejiang fishing boats (Lotus Si) was in swing, with tens of thousands of them, performing dramas and sacrificing animals, taking the years as an example. By the turn of February and March, there are many boat sets. In the twelfth year of Guangxu (1886), the "Net Boat Association" of the Dianshizhai Pictorial was accompanied by the text: "Jiaxing Beixiang Lian Sidang, August 13 is the birthday of King Liu, and there are no less than four or five thousand giant boats from near and far, from Wang Jiangjing Changhong Bridge to the temple for more than ten miles, moored like scales, it is a day to worship the gods to board the boat, to be paraded, and return to the official after a few years." ”
"Dianshizhai Pictorial" published in "Net Boat Society"
Around the time of the Qingming Dynasty and on the 13th of August, on the birthday of King Liu, fishermen from all over the world gathered on the north bank of Liansidang. In just a few days, thousands of fishing boats lined up along the north shore of Liansidang, squeezing the six thousand acres of wide surface into a narrow one-way channel. In the open space in front of the temple, boat people with local accents erected flagpoles, ripped open yellow flags, laid out rich offerings, helped the old and young, and landed one after another. On the day of the liuwang temple, there were 108 associations participating, a community of dozens of people, more than a thousand people, the associations are named after the role they play in the meeting, there are Ling class, Jia Ding class, warm car class, Xiangting class, nursing class, Kaidao class, Wudao class, Shijing class, music tide class, flag umbrella class, steel fork class, Titian class, lotus class, arm gong class, arm incense class, Taige class, uncle class, second master class, line class, dragon lantern class, big flag class, dismissal class, patrol class, baixiang class, waist drum class, red clothes class, dragon and tiger class, etc. These squads all have their own division of labor in the walkway, some carrying a car, some guarding a car, some Titian, some dancing dragons and lions, Taige dolls, carrying a flag and an umbrella, as well as a messenger dressed as a messenger, a prisoner dressed in red, all kinds of characters, hundreds of people carrying a dragon flag that is five or six meters high and snapping in the wind. The first thing to do was to sweep the church, and first there were seven provincial social leaders who twisted the chicken head on the temple site in front of the temple to sweep five ways. Subsequently, each class went to the Liu Wang Hall in accordance with their respective generations. The sixth class of scribes, armed with sticks, chains, shackles, and soap clothes, shuttled back and forth through the temple three times, and the gongs sounded in unison. At the end of the hall, he took King Liu out of the hall and carried the statue of King Liu into a warm car. At this time, pilgrims all offered gold and silver jewelry to King Liu to show the glory of the gods. When the classes were ready, they began to patrol The Incense of Liu Wang, and the people everywhere they went cheered. The incense patrol route revolves around Wang Jiangjing Town, and in the middle of the night Liu Wang stays in the town of Shangguan Wang Temple, and returns to the next day. If it rains, Liu Wang will take the waterway, first the drama boat opens the road, followed by twelve white boats, the white boat mainly performs water acrobatics for Liu Wang to watch, followed by Liu Wang's cruise ship, which can carry four or five hundred people to accompany the driver. The list of meetings was too numerous to mention, with as many as 180,000 pig heads paid by each fisherman's family, so much so that during the Republic of China, some newspapers said that they cost a billion yuan.
Fishermen will pounce
Preventing problems before they occur: the purpose of the folk racing club to drive away locusts
At the time of the Ming and Qing dynasties, the belief of Liu Meng in Jiangnan had been formed, and the belief of the fierce generals since the late Ming Dynasty was recognized by the government during the Yongzheng period of the Qing Dynasty, which can be said to be a kind of appeasement taken by the rulers of the Qing Dynasty to comply with the will of the people. The Fierce Generals Tournament has built a platform for local economic and trade exchanges, and residents on the shore and fishermen on the water can take this opportunity to communicate with each other and visit relatives and friends. At the same time, the general is originally a kind of folk movement, and the people involved in it respond to every call, work together, raise their spirits to run, exercise the people's physical fitness, and provide a drill opportunity for the local people to deal with the sudden intrusion of local bandits.
Of course, there are also misunderstandings about the locust plague and the god of locust repellent, for example, there is a sarcastic story in "Confused World": When the locust trend has spread, the states and counties have gone to work, saying how to kill and how to burn, these handling situations, the Taiwan master is greatly displeased: "What is this, several gigabytes of life have been killed by them." "He sent an ultimatum overnight, ordering all the prefectures and counties to go to the temple of General Liu Meng to pray, make wishes, sing operas, and repair temples. This locust is a divine insect, and it came by God's command, and naturally went away by God's order. If you blindly beat it up, not only will you kill many lives, but the god worm sent by General Liu Meng will be killed by you, and he will not be angry. In the future, if more and more factions are sent, will it be a matter of fighting? Therefore, the states and counties are not allowed to catch locusts. I am afraid that the states and counties will not do a good job, but they secretly sent dozens of alternate states and counties to visit privately outside. When the out-of-state counties received this letter, everyone was discouraged. There is also the "Notes on Yong Xianzhai" in "Qingpu Xinjing Town has Liu Meng's temple, whenever the newspaper race is out of the meeting, the four township land gods all come to the meeting, and the townspeople gather to tens of thousands, noisy and chaotic, can not be prohibited." There is a bridge near the left side of the temple, which will collapse and has not yet been repaired, and the bridge will be damaged by the crowd during the Yu fear race, or there will be drowning, because of the inspection of the town, the forbidden meeting will not be done. And the villagers did not listen, the situation was troublesome, the inspection could not be stopped, and they flew to report. Yu Fang planned to go to Xiao Zhi in person, and the report had been posted. Inquiring about the reason, there is a director Lu Moufu, and the false fierce will stop the speech. Yu Xiao said, "This is really Liu Gong's paper sage in 100,000 soldiers." Although the two cases are material in the notes of the novel, it is inevitable that some people will have such experiences when they are projected into real life.
The significance of folk religious activities for locust repellent is that they are always vigilant, precautionary, precautionary, and sometimes beyond the reach of politics, which is the so-called Shinto religion. The state has given full play to the function of sacrifice to stabilize the people's hearts and minds, so that all things can return without competing. The sacrifice of the locust repellent god is a constant reminder to the country to beware of this natural disaster. For the main body of the victims of the peasants, the race can make them have some sustenance and work together, and it comes down to the fact that the locust god sacrifice is a warning set by the state in response to natural disasters. Zhang Dai's "Night Sailing Ship" has "Zhao Shou Qingzhou, locusts from Qing, Qi entry." When the wind receded, he fell into the water and died. Ma Yuan is the defender of Wuling, the county has locusts, aid to the poor, thin taxes, locusts fly into the sea, turned into fish and shrimp. Sun Jue booked Hefei, the class people fought a number of locusts, and the officials took the rice to change it, and they did not damage the grass. Song was guarded by Jiujiang, and the locusts were scattered. In the second year of Zhenguan, Tang Taizong wished that the heavens would swallow locusts, and the locusts would not be harmed." These are all examples of relying on manpower to fight against the locust plague and protect the territory, and when the disaster is not born, the benevolent government is widely practiced, the people are respected, the love is spared, and various early warning mechanisms are done well, so as to prevent the problem before it occurs, and naturally the losses in the event of the locust disaster can be minimized.