Cansang Customs
01 · Historical Records
China is the earliest country in the world to engage in sericulture. As early as the middle of the Neolithic period, five to six thousand years ago, its ancestors began picking mulberry leaves, raising silkworms, and reeling silk to weave cloth. Sericulture is an important component of traditional Chinese agricultural culture. The "Tribute of Yu" chapter of the Book of Documents, China's earliest classic, already records that "where the soil suits mulberry, silkworms are reared"; the "Shanquan" chapter of the Spring and Autumn period work Guanzi likewise speaks of "the people being versed in sericulture"; and the lines describing folk sericulture customs in the Han dynasty yuefu poem "On the Road the Mulberry" — "Luo Fu is skilled in sericulture, picking mulberry in the corner south of the city" — are known and loved by all. The Hanshan Yacanhua temple fair, also called the "Silkworm Flower Temple Fair," originated roughly in the Song dynasty and grew increasingly prosperous from the Ming and Qing dynasties onward.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Sericulture is a crystallization of the wisdom of the Chinese nation and the source of the "Silk Road," the corridor of cultural exchange between China and the outside world. In the course of the emergence and development of sericulture, many fine customs of honoring silkworms, valuing mulberry, and loving and protecting mulberry trees took shape across the country and have been passed down from generation to generation among the people. Activities such as worshipping the Silkworm God and the Yacanhua (rolling for silkworm flowers) are among the more prominent of these; together with other sericulture customs, they constitute historical testimony to the flourishing development of ancient Chinese silkworm and mulberry culture. Tongxiang, in northern Zhejiang, is a principal sericulture area of the Jiangnan region. Its countryside is rich in silkworm-raising customs, among which the Hanshan Yacanhua temple fair — which worships the Silkworm God — is the most representative. The fair is divided into the stages known as First Qingming, Second Qingming and Third Qingming, running about ten days from beginning to end. That the Yacanhua fair has taken firm root in Tongxiang is tied to the rhythms of this water country. Mulberry leaves are picked twice a day, a silkworm's whole life lasts little more than twenty days, and in Jiangnan the solar terms and the silkworm season are often only three to five days apart; holding the fair around Qingming falls squarely before the first batch of silkworms mounts its frames. The villagers thus fold the most crucial stretch of the agricultural year into the temple fair, squeezing prayers, market-going, the buying of seedlings and the exchanging of frames onto the same street, so that when one fair is done, both jobs are settled. The trades at the fair are arranged accordingly: the stalls of silkworm implements, the carrying poles of mulberry saplings, the candy stalls, and an open space before the seat of the god's statue each occupy their own stretch. The crowd slows before the statue and hurries past the stalls; prayer and purchase each find their place on the same day. The fair is lively without disorder precisely because of this separated flow.
The temple opens at the first Qingming
The fair unfolds in three Qingming stages over some ten days, each stage keyed to the farmers' spare hours.
The roaring of the silkworm god fair
Crowds follow the image and the costumed procession as farmers come for signs of the coming silkworm season.
Incense and offerings to the silkworm god
Incense and fruit are set before the silkworm god, and the first request is always a clean start to the rearing room.
From the god to the rearing room
Once the fair ends, the rearing rooms are swept and repaired; piety and hard work divide the labour neatly.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Local legend in the Hanshan area recounts the Silkworm God's birth or descent there, which is why the place is known as the "Holy Land of Silkworm Flowers." The Hanshan Yacanhua temple fair has a long history and rich content, bearing a distinctly Jiangnan regional character.
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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
It reflects the highly developed reality of sericulture in Tongxiang and provides an important reference for the study of Jiangnan sericulture production, folk belief, and trade customs.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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