Chaoshan Traditional Festivals

Eight Festivals of the Year

There is a saying in the Chaoshan area: "As you live your life, don't forget the Eight Festivals of the Year." The various activities of the festival have been passed down from generation to generation and have become a common practice. Either to commemorate, or to imply, or to pray for blessings, it is rich in folklore connotations. More Chaoshan people go home to reunite with relatives and friends during these festivals, which enhances each other's emotions and cohesion with each other.

Spring Festival

The first day of the first month of the lunar calendar is called Yuan Day, which is the first day of the new year. In the Chaoshan area, the New Year usually lasts for four or five days. On the night of the Spring Festival, every household in the streets and alleys posted Spring Festival couplets and decorated the streets with lanterns. Have a reunion dinner. Early in the morning of the Spring Festival, adults and children bring one or two pairs of oranges (called "Daji") to relatives and friends' homes to pay New Year greetings and wish each other good luck. The recreational activities of the Spring Festival include English singing and dancing, battalion gongs and drums, holding big flags, bouma dance, dragon dance, lion dance, carp dance, etc.

Lantern Festival

The fifteenth day of the first lunar month is the Lantern Festival, which was called "Shangyuan Festival" in ancient times. Commonly known as the "Lantern Festival", Chaoshan people call it "the first half of the first lunar month". On that day, banyan leaves and bamboo branches must be placed on the lintel of every household to ensure safety; the main programs to celebrate the Lantern Festival include: Camping the Lord, admiring lanterns, adding lanterns, guessing lantern riddles, throwing money and throwing Maitreya Buddha, etc.

Qingming Festival

On Qingming Festival, the custom of visiting tombs and sweeping tombs is very popular in Chaoshan. The custom of sweeping tombs is "passing paper". In the old days, people would go to the ancestral cemetery to fill the graves with soil, sweep away the dust and weeds, use red paint to paint a new stone tablet number, and hang yellow and white strips of paper on the tombstones and tomb piles to hold sacrifices.

Dragon Boat Festival

Chaoshan people call the Dragon Boat Festival the "May Festival". Chaoshan dragon boat races are divided into two types: "real dragon" and "fake dragon". In terms of making rice dumplings, there is a weather proverb that goes, "If you haven't eaten the rice dumplings in May, you won't be able to let them go if they are broken." Chaoshan people hang bunches of mugwort tied with "red-head ropes" on the lintels, door knockers and even under the eaves during the Dragon Boat Festival. Grass, calamus, pomegranate flower, garlic and dragon boat flower are combined into five kinds called "Five Auspicious".

Hungry Ghost Festival

The fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month is the Hungry Ghost Festival. It is commonly known as "July Half", "Shigu", "Ghost Festival", and also called "Ulan Shenghui". On the day of "Almsgiving to Gu", Chaozhou people either set up a stage to "give alms to the orphans" in the village, or place sacrifices and money paper at the door of their house. After the sacrifice, they burn the money paper, scatter white rice on the ground, burn incense and pray, and insert the incense. On the ground in front of and behind the house.

Mid-Autumn Festival

Commonly known as "August and a half", the main programs are: 1. Taro ancestor worship. There is a common proverb in Chaoshan: "When rivers and streams meet each other, you will be afraid of eating taro."; 2. Worshiping the moon mother, most people will carefully make handicrafts to worship the moon one month before the Mid-Autumn Festival. The essential items on the night of worshiping the moon are also Such as the Eight Immortals table, "(Eight Immortals) treasures", big incense, various fruits, pies, etc. The moon worshippers are mainly women and children, so there is a common saying that "men do not worship the full moon, women do not worship the stove". 3. Burn the tower. Almost every element of these programs is related to the anti-Yuan history of Chaoshan people (conveying information)

Winter Festival

Winter Festival is the winter solstice among the twenty-four festivals. The gap between farming is coming to an end for a year, so it is also called the Little New Year. It is an old custom to offer sacrifices to gods and ancestors during the winter festival, and the whole family eats sweet glutinous rice balls to express a happy reunion. In addition, during the Winter Solstice, people worship ancestors, eat sweet pills (eating "Winter Festival Pills" will make you one year older), visit graves, etc. ("Spring Paper" is used for Qingming Festival, and "Winter Paper" is used for Winter Solstice)

New Year's Eve

Chaoshan people call it "New Year's Eve" or "New Year's Eve". The New Year's Eve festival activities begin with worshiping ancestors. In the afternoon, a family of all ages gets a haircut, bathes and changes into new clothes, and then begins worshiping ancestors. For sacrifices and rituals, after worshiping the ancestors, tear off the old couplets on the main door, hall door, and room door and paste the new Spring Festival couplets on them. Then there is a reunion dinner "around the fire" and giving New Year's money (also called "waist pressure"). And all aspects of staying up late on New Year's Eve.

Laure

The folk custom of "Laure" originated from the Chaozhou people's incomparable worship of the land. The worship of the land led to the emergence of the "God of the Land".

The ancients called the God of the Earth "She", while the Chaozhou people called him Tu Gong or Bo Gong. As you can see), the folk activity of "Laore" has been passed down in Chaozhou for thousands of years.

Chandelier custom

From the eleventh to the eighteenth day of the first lunar month, especially on the Lantern Festival, every household in Chaoshan has the custom of lighting up lights and chandeliers. Because the words "deng" and "ding" in Teochew dialect have the same pronunciation, lighting a lamp and having a baby are close pronunciations, so Chaozhou people believe that lighting a lamp is a good omen for having a baby. On the Lantern Festival, people carry lanterns and prepare paper and silver incense candles, go to temples in the countryside to light fires, and hang them on shrines and bedside at home. This is called "hanging happy lanterns."

Chandelier custom

Going out of the garden

"Going out of the garden": Going out of the garden is a unique coming-of-age custom in Chaoshan area. The child wants to "get out of the garden". All families with 15-year-old boys and girls should prepare three animals (roosters, ducks, and pork) and fruits for their children on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month and the Ghost Festival on the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month to bid farewell to their parents-in-law. Mother-in-law), which means that the child has grown up and can now go out of the garden, and is no longer a child playing in the garden all day long.

Gongfu tea, porcelain burning, lanterns

Legend records: The custom of wearing red leather clogs and eating rooster heads when "going out of the garden" is said to be related to Lin Daqin, the champion of Chaozhou Prefecture during the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty.