Nongliershisijieqi
01 · Historical Records
The origins of the Jiuhua Beginning of Spring Festival can be seen from two angles: the title of the God of Spring and the practical need to urge farming. Worshipping Goumang, the God of Spring, treats the renewal of the year's beginning as something that must be reported to the deity in charge of plants and farming; welcoming spring and receiving blessings, and praying for abundant harvests, converts this piety directly into the year's prospects. The practices of making the spring ox and whipping the spring ox originally turn the real situation — that the plough ox has not yet entered the fields — into a ritual object that can be dealt with: the whipping stands in for a real bout of ploughing, announcing the meaning of the spring command and spring ploughing at the same time. This whole arrangement is of one lineage with China's long-standing traditional folk rituals of agricultural civilization; today, in western Zhejiang, few villages preserve it completely. In the ceremony the local chief administrative official performs the rite of offering incense, marking the beginning of urging spring ploughing; this joins the folk prayers with official encouragement of farming, and shows that the ritual was never merely village entertainment, but also had a side connected with local governance. In this way the countryside's longing for spring gains a concrete date: without needing to calculate it from an almanac, once this day has passed and the ox has been whipped, the call to spring ploughing may be considered given.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Jiuhua Beginning of Spring Festival is a traditional agricultural seasonal custom relatively well preserved in Waichen Village, Jiuhua Township, Kecheng District, Quzhou City, Zhejiang Province. The day of Beginning of Spring in the lunar calendar is the day of sacrifice, and the Jiuhua Wutong Ancestral Hall is the main venue of the Beginning of Spring Festival. The main sacrificial activities include worshipping Goumang, the God of Spring; welcoming spring and receiving blessings and praying for abundant harvests; offering sacrifices; performers playing the Mangshen (God of Spring); burning incense in welcome; making the spring ox; performing opera to repay the god; spring outings; and whipping the spring ox. Whipping the spring ox is an important part of the whole Beginning of Spring Festival: a chosen person dresses as the Mangshen and whips the spring ox. The local chief administrative official performs the rite of offering incense, marking the beginning of urging spring ploughing. The ritual expresses people's hopes for favorable weather, abundant harvests, and peace and prosperity for the country. The Beginning of Spring Festival at the Jiuhua Wutong Ancestral Hall is a precious survival of China's long-standing traditional folk rituals of agricultural civilization, and is of great significance for carrying on the fine traditions and promoting the spirit of the Chinese nation.
Worship at the spring day
On the first day of spring the village worships the spring god and prays for a full harvest.
Building the spring ox
A straw spring ox is built before the rite and kept ready for the whip.
The Mang god whips the spring ox
A chosen man dressed as the god Mang whips the ox, publishing the spring order.
Offering incense and sacrifice
Incense is burned and offerings set up as the rite begins.
The magistrate's incense-rite
The local official offers incense, marking the start of the ploughing season.
Theatre for the god and spring outing
Theatre and a spring outing conclude the day, mixing worship and excursion.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The site where the Jiuhua Beginning of Spring Festival is best preserved is Waichen Village, Jiuhua Township, Kecheng District, Quzhou City, and the place of sacrifice is the Jiuhua Wutong Ancestral Hall. The whole village takes Beginning of Spring in the lunar calendar as the day of sacrifice; before the festival, work on the spring ox begins and offerings are prepared, and on the day a chosen person dresses as the Mangshen and takes up the whip. As a mainstay of village-community sacrifice in western Zhejiang, the ancestral hall is put to use at every year's beginning and at prayers for grain; the incense and fire before and after the festival merge with the New Year customs. The ritual of welcoming spring and receiving blessings invites the host family together with relatives and neighbors, while performing opera to repay the god and spring outings spread the ritual beyond the village; participants include both villagers and visitors from other villages who come on hearing the news to enjoy the spring outing. That the local chief administrative official performs the rite of offering incense shows that the official duty of urging farming has a concrete person present on this day, so the ritual keeps its village-community character while also carrying public force. The spring ox, offerings and account books left from previous Beginning of Spring Festivals are the most direct basis for re-enacting this ritual sequence.
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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The Jiuhua Beginning of Spring Festival is one of the better-preserved Beginning of Spring sacrificial sequences; its value lies in turning the astronomical seasonal term into an actionable sequence of movements for the village: there are presiding officiants for worshipping the god, helpers for making the ox, actors for whipping the ox, and officials present to offer incense — each in his proper place, without confusion. Unlike those local gazetteers that record only a single line about the seasonal custom, here the ritual sequence is carried out year by year by living people, and the style of the spring ox, the number of incense sticks and candles, and the arrangement of the opera bill can all still be pointed out. What is difficult about complete preservation is this: making the spring ox involves no small amount of process and material, while staging opera and going on spring outings requires the labor of the whole village, so when many young people leave home to work elsewhere, the continuation of the ritual comes to rest on a few households. The current practice is to fix the day of sacrifice firmly on lunar Beginning of Spring without moving it, while the content of the ritual may be slightly increased or decreased according to the year's harvest, so as to lighten the burden of organization, while still ensuring that the two essential matters — reverence for the god and urging farming — are not abandoned.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Yang Xingya 05-3004
- Wu Haishen 05-3005
- Feng Wanming 05-3006
- Feng Wu
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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