Wenll Thousand Mile Grass Man (Dong Xuliang)
The moon is full, as bright as a jade plate. Early autumn and late wind, it is July and a half again. The half of the month is the middle yuan, and the small village will be noisy. Ghost festival street lights, customs are passed down every year. The village temple burned smoke, and the old woman recited the sutra. Red candles, cigarettes wafting in the air. The sound of Amitabha Buddha, the sound is piety. Layers of fire paper are stacked, and the chanting is turned into paper money. In the pond, the moso bamboo is cut down and the bamboo is split into a lamp pole. The drying field is lined up in unison, and the half moon has dried thoroughly. Bamboo poles are soaked in sesame oil, and the yellow paper is sticky layer by layer. Young and old are busy, and the street lights are thousands of poles. Go up the hill to pick the leaves of the tung trees and make the leaves into a rice dish. Gather sesame oil from a hundred houses and cook a hundred rice. The oil is a hundred oils, and the plate is a fragrant plate. The sutra is the hundred family sutra, and the rice is the hundred family meal. Hundreds of families are one, and sacrifices are in the middle. God of devotion is invited to worship tonight.
The drums in the village suddenly rose, and the barking dogs ran in the alley. The gong sounded sharply and sent off on the embankment. The hustle and bustle of the sky, the nighthawk flew away early. The evening wind plucks the ginkgo biloba and laughs at the night cicadas. The elderly chanted the Trumpet and walked in front of the line. Boom and boom, wooden fish knock first. The strong men followed closely behind, and each of the lamps and rice was a burden. There were several people left and right, each carrying a bamboo basket. In the basket was a street lamp, and the teenager plugged in the side of the road. Under the lamp, there are tung leaves, and hundreds of meals are on the leaves. Take the fire on the street lamp, a lamp and a paper of money. Gongs and drums and double plutonium, the band is the original class. There were cannon sticks, and there was a banging sound. The street lamp flashes with the wind, inviting ghosts to a hundred families to eat. Cannon music for a month and night, please God a hundred family money. Gongs and drums are heard and the street lights are flashing.
A group of twenty people, old and middle-aged and young. Exit my north village mouth and follow the banks of the big creek. Circle around my LuxiTan and make two stops along the creek. Practice through the road, put on the lights to the south of the village. The north slope of Huangsonggang, the five peaks of the west mountain. Looking south to Baiyun Crater, east to another mountain. Take the foot of the small ridge, and the mountain road is winding. Xia Dong Village has been down, and the moon has illuminated the terraces. The stone steps stand at each other and face the Chicken Crown Rock. The path slope is ancient pine straight, and the lights are bright and dark in the distant mountains. Long practice ridge, gazebo is in front. Small stationed and repeated, Liangjia Village can be seen. Overlooking the outside training, tonight there is no sleep. Bid farewell to the lantern ping, and welcome Guantang Mountain in the north. Turned the back of the ditch, and returned to the south of the village at night. The village mouth greeted the team, smiling and smiling. Looking back at the street lamp road, the moon is dancing. It's like a dragon dance, uninterrupted. There is a shadow hidden, and the back is protected for safety. Street lights moon night walk, twenty or thirty years ago!
Zhongyuan put street lights, and the customs are passed down every year. How big is a village and how far are the street lights. Everyone worships ghosts and gods, and every household sets up a feast. The family worships the ancestors, and the wild sacrifices respect the wild souls. Ancestors blessed the family, and the gods and ghosts protected the whole village. Street lamps are dozens of miles, praying for thousands of blessings. Bless me to practice the village, and the wind and rain are also smooth. Bless my Greater China, guotai people and peace. Be healthy at home and safe when you go out. The harvest is good every year, and good luck is always accompanied. He has a wide range of business and wealth, and has become a Beijing official in politics. When frustrated, someone asked for warmth. The old man instructed the teenager, Chongli July and a half. Raise your head to the gods, and fear the words and deeds before.
Zhongyuan Festival, also known as ghost festival, known in Buddhism as Obon Festival, is one of the four traditional festivals in China. In my hometown of Xinchang County, Shaoxing City, commonly known as July and a half. July 15 is called zhongyuan festival, mainly to worship ancestors and ghosts. Although this day is still the high temperature season, autumn has passed and a number of crops have matured.
Folk worship the ancestors as a rule, use new rice and other sacrifices, and report autumn to the ancestors. Therefore, every Mid-Yuan Festival, the family sacrifices the ancestors, and the ritual is performed when offering. Some places also go to the grave on July 15 to visit the grave and worship the ancestors.
As for the worship of ghosts and gods, it is said that on that day the gates of hell are opened, and the ghosts of Hades will be released. Ghosts sacrificed by their descendants and descendants go home to receive incense offerings; orphaned souls wander around, wandering anywhere in search of food.
Therefore, in July, people hold "Pudu" and "shi lonely" almsgiving activities such as food sacrifices and chanting of sutras to universally surpass the lonely ghosts, not only to prevent them from being a disaster to the world, but also to pray for the ghosts to help remove the disease and bless the peace of the family home.
Some areas have the custom of Pudu on this day, called "Zhongyuan Pudu", which later developed into a grand festival, called "Oban Festival" and "Oban Shenghui". Xiao Fan's area is east China, and in most of Xinchang County, the main ceremony is to release street lights.
To put out the street lamp, first of all, from the beginning of the month, the village organized a collective recitation of the Buddhist scriptures, generally to the small temple in the village, of course, at that time, the countryside was basically buddhist and Taoist, and the chanters were generally old women.
Then split the bamboo into a street lamp pole, dry it, and then wrap it in yellow paper, and a street lamp is made. Then each family offers vegetable oil, hundreds of oils, soaked in lamp poles and set aside. Street lamps are used to illuminate the ghosts and gods when the sacrifices are placed in the wild.
Then each family offered rice to cook hundreds of rice, and collected tung leaves to use as rice plates. The people in the countryside are very religious, and although the sacrifice is a hundred rice, it is still to be served in a rice bowl, and this rice bowl is the tung leaf.
On the night of the festival, the villagers gathered together, first of all, to worship the earth, set up an altar table in the open air, and the offerings were not complicated, such as rice, wine, vegetables, and incense candles. After the sacrifice, the offering table is removed and incense candles are inserted at the entrance of the village.
Then there is the eating of a hundred meals, and one of the things that is indispensable in food is wheat cake. After dinner, people gathered at the entrance of the village. When he was in junior high school, Xiao Fan personally participated in such a traditional festival of street lamps.
When all the participants have arrived, they are ready to start. There is a special band in the village responsible for beating gongs and drums, which is simple but very complete, with gongs, drums, plutonium, wooden fish and so on. The division of labor is also very professional, picking rice burdens, picking street lamps, lighting lights, placing tung leaves, putting rice, putting scriptures, and finally a person chanting and knocking on wooden fish. There are often several people who are cut off to ensure that no fire is started.
The drums sounded, the band chimed in unison, and the team set off. The route of releasing street lights in the village is generally starting from the head of the small village dam, circling Luxitan, passing through the hydropower station called Shimen Second Station, crossing the Lilian Village, and then going south along Huangsonggang and Xiaoling, turning in the direction of the Outward Practice Village under xiadong village, and returning to the starting place after practicing ling, Jiguanyan, Haogoubei, and Lulongli.
In the villages along the way, the villagers stopped and watched, commenting on which village had the most neat street lights this year, the longest lighting time, and the best drum music.
This line is relatively long, Mao estimated that there are more than ten miles of road, plus the release of street lights, generally takes two or three hours, everyone needs to rest, while waiting for the person responsible for safety after the break. We practiced resting at the turning point of the Ling Ridge under xia dong village, which was an established resting point for many years. During the break, the adults smoke a cigarette and tell some legends and stories in the village, such as some things about putting out street lights.
Looking back at the road when it came, the street lights on the side of the road were burning fiercely, and the people behind them had been extinguished, and the people behind them did not finally meet with the large troops until the street lights behind them were all extinguished. I used to look at the street lamps in other villages in the distance, and it was a spectacular sight, dozens of street lamps burning, like a fire dragon snaking on the mountain, or on the side of the road down the mountain.
The back is constantly extinguished, and the front is constantly lit up, and the solitaire is generally constantly extinguished. The fire dragon started at the mouth of a certain village, made a big circle, and then returned to the village.
At that time, I was already very interested in the July half-way street lamp, and I remember that I had written a diary at that time, but unfortunately I can't find it now.
It's just that now, there are fewer and fewer people in the village, and it seems that they are no longer able to organize such activities every year, and I am really worried that such activities will one day completely disappear in the countryside like mine.
Folklore like this should have a written record. So I wrote with my feelings, trying to record the process of a complete July and a half release of street lights in Jingling Town, Xinchang County, Zhejiang Province.