Nongliershisijieqi
01 · Historical Records
According to tradition, the Niangniang Temple was first built in the Jianyan era of the Southern Song. Since the Ming and Qing dynasties it has been destroyed and rebuilt many times, and the offerings of incense have flourished.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Beginning of Summer is one of the twenty-four solar terms and marks the start of summer. This is the crystallization of their practical knowledge and wisdom in coordinating the rhythm of local production and life, and it also expresses the good wishes of acting in accordance with the season and of praying for blessings and welcoming fortune. At the western end of the Gaoting mountain range there is a peak with a Niangniang Temple built halfway up it, commonly called 'Banshan' (Half Hill), from which the subdistrict takes its name. From the beginning of the silkworm season in the second month to the Dragon Boat Festival in the fifth month, temple fairs follow one another without cease, and the customs of the Beginning of Summer are especially flourishing. The contents of the Banshan Beginning of Summer customs are as follows: seasonal belief and ritual activities, including the Silkworm Flower Fair, ancestral worship at the Beginning of Summer, the temple fair for the birthday of the goddess, and the ceremony of seeing off spring and welcoming summer; seasonal games and recreations, including weighing people, burning wild rice, painting clay cats, and hill running; seasonal food activities, including black glutinous rice, broad beans, strong-foot bamboo shoots, Beginning of Summer cakes, and seven-family tea; and seasonal trade activities, including a market fair for the agricultural and sericultural products of the Jiangnan region. The Banshan Beginning of Summer customs integrate belief activities, social intercourse, games and recreations, seasonal food, and market activities; they are a marker of the life and social-cultural development of the people of Hangzhou at the turning point between spring and summer, and they enable traditional knowledge and local culture to be transmitted through colorful folk activities and related rituals. These embody both the deep nostalgia of city dwellers and the need of cultural building in the new era to carry history forward and integrate the spirit of the present.
The silkworm-flower fair
The temple fair runs from the silkworm season in the second month to the Dragon Boat Festival, peaking around the start of summer.
Seeing off spring, welcoming summer
The central rite of the day, marking the passage from spring into summer for both households and deities.
Weighing the body
People are weighed for a lucky stout physique, turning the scale into a neighbourly occasion.
Cooking rice in the wild
Rice is cooked outdoors on gathered fuel and shared from one pot when the flame dies down.
Strengthening bamboo shoots and seven-family tea
Seasonal shoots strengthen the legs, while tea blended from seven households binds neighbours into one pot.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The local community people take it as their own duty to protect their cultural traditions; in practice they unite and help one another and share their results, demonstrating the cultivating effect of traditional culture on civilization and its function in serving the public cultural life of the urban community.
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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The Banshan Beginning of Summer customs are a series of folk activities of seeing off spring and welcoming summer around the Beginning of Summer, inherited for generations by the people of the Banshan area of Hangzhou. Banshan Subdistrict, where the Beginning of Summer customs are transmitted, lies in the Gaoting mountain range in the northern part of Gongshu District, Hangzhou, at the southern end of the Grand Canal, about 10 kilometers from the city center, with convenient water and land transport. The Banshan Beginning of Summer customs of Hangzhou are an important component of the local transmission and protection of the knowledge and practice system of the Twenty-Four Solar Terms, and they reflect the distinctive rhythm of life and manner of conduct of the people of this region. The Beginning of Summer activities in the Banshan area take the temple fair as their axis, stringing together the silkworm season from the second month to the Dragon Boat Festival in the fifth month, and are liveliest around the Beginning of Summer: seasonal beliefs, games, food, and the agricultural and sericultural market are layered one upon another on the same day, ancestral worship and market-going proceed in parallel, and hill running and eating black glutinous rice each have their appointed times. Urban residents place their nostalgia here, and the former rural seasonal order thus continues to hold in new settings in the streets of the city, so that knowledge of the seasons circulates among the population rather than remaining only in the countryside.
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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