Song of Torch Festival
Wang Chonglv
This is a nation of fire, and its history is a long river of fire.
Torch Festival, the biggest festival in a year, is actually an ancient torch festival of Yi people.
In the eyes of Liangshan Yi people, fire is sacred, and it can purify everything. Sacrifices should be turned three times one by one on the fire, or a stone should be burned, and steam will come out after water quenching, and then the sacrifices should be turned three times on it to remove all the filth. They regard fire as sacred, and regard pot village and fire pond as places of gods. It is forbidden for people and animals to trample and cross. The kindling rope commonly used by hunters and shepherds should be hung on the wall of the house at home. After use, you can only crush it by hand, and you can't drown it with spit. Fire is the center, where there is fire, there will be a circle of people, and fire has become the axis of uniting people.
The first generation of human civilization was illuminated by flames. Many nationalities in the world have the custom of worshipping fire and forbidding it. However, like the Yi people in our country, it is rare to sanctify fire worship and fix it in the form of festivals, combined with wishing a bumper harvest.
There is a local legend about the Torch Festival: A long time ago in the summer, the drought was very serious and the crops grew thin. But the gods still sent officials, and the lower bound urged rent and debt. People begged for mercy, but none remained, all of them were taken away. This angered the hero and made him determined to get rid of this evil job. As a result, he fell to his death while wrestling on June 24. Just as people were celebrating the victory, the God released the worm, which covered the sun and swallowed the crops in a blink of an eye. Hao Xing was heartbroken and used his quick wits. He mobilized men, women and children to collect Artemisia sticks, tied them into torches and burned them all over Shan Ye. After nine days of fierce fighting in Kuya, he finally eliminated the insects and saved the crops that were about to be harvested. Later, in order to commemorate this hero and pray for a bumper harvest, people lit torches every year. Over time, the Torch Festival was formed.
When we came to Liangshan, it happened to coincide with the Yi Torch Festival on June 24th of the lunar calendar. After breakfast, everyone took a bus to a very open lawn in Tuomugou, Wudaoqing Township, Puge County. The four Zhou Tianran swelled like a grandstand, and people were crowded up and down. It is said that there were more than 30,000 people. There is a proverb in Yi nationality: Chinese New Year is a festival for the mouth, and Torch Festival is a festival for the eyes. It means that Chinese New Year pays attention to eating and drinking well, and Torch Festival pays attention to dressing up well, which is fun and attractive. Looking around, all girls' colorful skirts, flower heads, embroidered vests and boys' white carpets, blue carpets and ribbons are like a huge colorful garland, covering green fields.
First of all, the Yi daughters performed. They held oil umbrellas and triangular colored towels in a circle and sang the beautiful and moving "Duet". With beautiful songs and light dance steps, it weaves a daughter river with endless feelings, which rolls slowly under the blue sky like a sun flower. The beauty pageant with a history of thousands of years can best show this beauty. The beauty pageant depends not only on the girls' figure, appearance and dress, but also on their manners and demeanor, as well as their usual moral conduct, including their performance in treating their parents and elders. The judges are all venerable old people in the cottage. They search and choose among the holiday crowds all day, compare and negotiate repeatedly, and have authoritative opinions. No one will doubt or accuse them. Only three people are selected for each torch festival and each venue. Once they are selected, they will become the favorite objects of girls and idols in the hearts of young people. Where there are beautiful women, there are constant noises around the tile house at night, and the footprints on the backwater road are the most in the morning.
I used to think that a nation in a relatively closed state may not necessarily pursue intense stimulation, intense transformation and a certain degree of tension. But after coming to Liangshan, I found that the spiritual life here is more suitable for the tense and enthusiastic modern lifestyle. This can be seen from the audience's investment, enthusiasm and concentration in wrestling, horse racing, bullfighting and sheep fighting. It shows that the vast Yi area is more dynamic and open than the Han area which pursues tranquility and comfort and is dominated by farming civilization, and the "light of life" is more fully distributed. This may be due to the long-term mobility of production and life, the difficulty in obtaining means of subsistence, and the harsh natural conditions, which have created its vigorous vitality and maintained a high degree of activation and excitement of the nervous system.
It was getting dark, and people lit torches made of dried wormwood in the square in front of the street, lined up in a long line, and sang the greetings of the Torch Festival loudly, and walked to the fields and hills. Then, all the mountains rang: "Dole Lotus, Dole Lotus, burning pigs, sheep, cows and horses, burning pests that eat crops, burning ghosts that are not warm, and burning ghosts that are not full of food." Dorothy! Dorothy! "
Because the Torch Festival is in midsummer, the seedlings in the field are in a vigorous growth period, and it is also the peak of the reproduction of various insects that harm crops. When the torch was lit in the field, those pests quickly gathered to look for light and died together in the sea of fire. Therefore, torches do have the function of killing insects and protecting seedlings. Late at night, I looked around, but I saw mountains and plains, where golden dragons were flying and swimming, and people seemed to be in a world of fire. Fireworks will also be set off in the city to send light to the sky and make the dark sky glow. The ancients had a poem: "Clouds cover the red sun and just contain mountains, and torches return alternately." Ten thousand lotus flowers open the sea market, and there are stars in the world one day. "It can be said that it is a true and accurate portrayal.
The mountain is burning, the water is burning and the sky is burning. Correspondingly, people's emotions are burning, excited and immersed in extreme excitement. Facing the fire of the Milky Way, I can't help dancing. I read aloud the poem in Guo Moruo's "Phoenix Nirvana": "We are vivid, we are free, we are vigorous, and we have a long history. First of all, it has a long history. Everything is long ... the fire is you. Fire is me. The fire is him. Fire is fire. Soar! Soar! Sing! Sing! "
Torch Festival embodies a carnival spirit from beginning to end, but more importantly, it reflects a spiritual demand of modern people. From a broader collective psychology, people are willing to use this festival to create a grand and joyful atmosphere in which they participate, so that their body and mind can be relaxed and excited, which is contrary to the routine and step-by-step life order on weekdays, and will not be considered outrageous and extravagant by others.
Appreciation of Torch Festival songs
Song of Torch Festival is an essay by Wang Chonglv, a famous contemporary writer in China, which reflects the Torch Festival of Yi people. Selected as the third unit of the first volume of the seventh grade of the Jiangsu Education Edition "Folk Custom". The works vividly show the grand occasion of the Torch Festival, a major festival of the Yi people, leaving a deep impression on readers. The artistic features of the article are distinct, mainly reflected in three aspects:
First, by depicting the grand occasion of Torch Festival and showing folk customs, the author uses rhetorical devices such as metaphor, personification and exaggeration to stimulate readers' interest. Second, the Torch Festival is suitable for midsummer, and the seedlings in the farmland are in a vigorous growth period. At this time, the scene of lighting the torch is extremely grand. "Golden dragons are flying everywhere, swimming and undulating, and rushing endlessly, making people feel like they are in a world of fire. Fireworks are also fired in the city at the same time, sending light to the sky and making the dim sky shine. " This kind of writing is so arrogant that it reads as if it were there. Third, I am deeply touched. At the end of the article, the Torch Festival embodies a carnival spirit from beginning to end, but more importantly, it embodies the spiritual needs of modern people. From a broader collective psychology, people are willing to use this festival to create a grand and joyful atmosphere in which they participate, so that they can relax and realize spiritual sublimation. " It is meaningful and unforgettable.
Then, how to better let students feel the life interest, folk customs and beautiful language expressed in the works, and let them be infected and edified by art? I have determined the teaching concept of "Song of Torch Festival": teaching with prose, reading with poetry and tasting with painting, so that students can read from words and feel from images. Specifically, guide students to read and understand from the following aspects:
First, draw people as "paintings" with the help of the media.
With the help of multimedia-aided teaching, I seize the characteristics of the emotional prose, and let students experience the carnival beauty of the ancient torch festival of Yi people with vivid pictures, unique sound quality and dynamic visual effects. Let the students see the beauty of the costumes of young Yi men and women at the Torch Festival. Look at the whole beauty pageant at the Torch Festival, the most beautiful Yi girls, the grand occasion at the Torch Festival … thus inspiring their yearning for ethnic customs.
Second, use the person skillfully and start the narrative.
The author narrates in the first person "I", that is, in the article, the author narrates the facts he saw and experienced with his own eyes, that is, what I saw, heard, did and felt. The choice of this narrative angle is convenient for the author to express his feelings directly and fully, so that readers can feel immersive and empathetic, and give readers a sense of reality and intimacy. In the works, the author always looks, listens and thinks from the perspective of "I" or "we" when describing the Torch Festival of the Yi people, which makes the readers have a sense of reality that the author is with himself and enhances the appeal of the article.
Third, the performance of "painting people", and strive to "blend scenes."
Mao Dun said: "People are the greatest scenery." In the article, the activities of the Yi Torch Festival can help students understand and stimulate their imagination and aesthetic taste.
1. What are the characteristics of people's clothing on the torch festival of the Yi nationality on June 24th of the lunar calendar?
2. What impression did the performance of Yi daughter Duo leave on you?
3. How did the beauty pageant of Yi people begin? What are the conditions?
4. As the key programs in the Torch Festival: wrestling, horse racing, bullfighting and sheep fighting, what kind of mental outlook does it present to the Yi people?
This series of problems, from plane, three-dimensional, colorful and dynamic pictures to "artistic conception-trigger-association-feeling", constitute a beautiful torch festival customs map. Let the students understand through repeated reading.
Fourthly, analyze the conciseness and elegance of this language.
These works exude an antique flavor. The author often uses the grammatical rules of modern language to express the words and phrases in classical poetry, so that they can be integrated into the text without trace, into the whole discourse of his prose and into his own expressive language factors, but they are not lonely at all. For example, in the article "I can't help dancing", I used "Preface to Poetry": "Emotion moves in China and is shaped in words. Words are not enough, I sigh. Lament for lack, so sing forever. Without singing forever, I don't know how to dance with my hands. I can dance with my feet to express my unspeakable joy. In addition, direct quotation of Chinese and foreign poetry fragments is also a feature of the language of the work. Writers often take a sentence or a fragment from Chinese and foreign poetry and prose and integrate it into their own writing, but it is not lonely at all, because it is integrated into the whole discourse of his prose without trace and becomes a language factor to express their feelings. For example, the poem of the ancients is used in the work: "The clouds cover the red sun and just contain the mountains, and the torches return alternately." "Ten thousand lotus flowers open the sea market, and the stars fall into the world one day." For another example, the author borrowed a poem from Guo Moruo's "Phoenix Nirvana": "We are vivid, we are free, we are prosperous, and we have a long history. First of all, it has a long history. Everything is long ... the fire is you. Fire is me. The fire is him. Fire is fire. Soar! Soar! Sing! Sing! " This makes the carnival spirit embodied in the Torch Festival reach its climax.
Of course, when introducing the Torch Festival, this paper not only introduces the important role of fire in the history of the development of the Yi people, its position in the minds of the Yi people and the grand occasion of the Torch Festival, but also skillfully inserts the legend about the Torch Festival in the fifth natural paragraph, which not only explains why fire occupies such an important position in the minds of the Yi people, but also effectively highlights the theme of the article and enhances the cultural connotation of the article. This is very consistent with the characteristics of prose "scattered in form but not scattered in spirit"
Brief introduction of the author
Wang Chonglv, pen name, male, 1935, was born in Panjin, Liaoning Province on February 5th. Member of the 5th and 6th Presidium of Chinese Writers Association, the 7th Honorary Member, Chairman and Honorary Chairman of Provincial Writers Association, and Adjunct Professor of Chinese Department of Nankai University and Liaoning University. I worked as a middle school teacher and journalist, and later worked in provincial and municipal leading bodies. Long-term adherence to amateur writing, Wang Cong, Lin Mu, Liu Yin, Ren Zhi as the main pen names, published a large number of various essays and some old-fashioned poems in literary publications and newspaper supplements, and was accepted as a member of the Chinese Writers Association on 1983. He used to be deputy secretary of Yingkou Municipal Committee, chairman of Yingkou Federation of Literary and Art Circles, propaganda minister of Liaoning Provincial Committee and deputy director of Liaoning Provincial People's Congress Standing Committee.