Gangneung danoje festival has a long-standing reputation. During the annual Dragon Boat Festival, there are millions of tourists from Korea and all over the world. What attracts so many participants and visitors? This can not but be attributed to the great attention and effective protection of the non-material culture by the Gangneung municipal government of South Korea. It is this move that makes a folk festival a symbol of Gangneung culture and Korean national spirit. Become an intangible cultural heritage enjoyed by mankind; It has become a window for the outside world to understand Korean culture and the feelings of Gangneung people. The Dragon Boat Festival mentioned by South Korea in the "World Heritage Application" incident refers to the Dragon Boat Festival in Gangneung.
Different from the custom of Dragon Boat Festival in China.
Gangneung Dragon Boat Festival is indeed an interesting cultural phenomenon in East Asian "Chinese Character Cultural Circle". As far as festival customs are concerned, the Dragon Boat Festival originated in China, but in the long-term communication and international exchange, it has been absorbed and accepted by countries and nations around China, and placed in its own cultural soil, forming unique festival customs of each country and nation.
If we trace back to the prototype of gangneung danoje festival, there is no doubt that it is influenced by China culture. The explanation of "Dragon Boat Festival" is recorded in many Korean classics, which is the same as that of China people. For example, South Korea also calls the fifth day of May "heavy noon", "heavy five", "Duanyang" and "May Festival". The unique word in South Korea is "Dragon Boat Festival", which means the day of God. According to the traditional custom, on the Dragon Boat Festival, people eat "dwarf cakes" and drink barley juice. Women wash their hair with calamus soup or drink calamus water, or make up with calamus dew, which is called "calamus makeup". Stick a cinnabar symbol on the doorpost of a scholar-bureaucrat to ward off evil spirits, and the monarch and his subjects will give each other fans to congratulate them on the Dragon Boat Festival.
Many customs of China Dragon Boat Festival, such as inserting mugwort leaves, calamus, eating zongzi, drinking realgar wine, wearing a purse, riding with five poisons, tying colorful wisps, rowing dragon boats and commemorating Qu Yuan, do not exist in Korean Dragon Boat Festival customs. However, the Dragon Boat Festival in Gangneung, South Korea also contains rich contents, with sacrifices, performances and entertainment as the main contents. Among them, the sacrificial ceremony preserved the complete form and content, which can be said to be the core of gangneung danoje festival. This is also the main reason why gangneung danoje festival 1967 was designated as Korean intangible cultural property 13.
During the period of gangneung danoje festival, sacrificial ceremonies mainly came from myths and legends. The gods they sacrificed were the "Daguanling Mountain God" and the cave (village) god, and as many as twelve figures were deified, such as the Buddhist god "Brahma Buddha God" Jin Yuxin and Daguanling Buddhist woman Cheng Huang Jia Zheng.
A well-preserved tradition
Gangneung danoje festival is one of the well-preserved traditional festivals and customs in Korea. Originally, many places in South Korea had the custom of Dragon Boat Festival, but with the development of society, it gradually disappeared, and only Gangneung area was completely preserved.
In Jiangling area, the Dragon Boat Festival has complicated ceremonies. It usually takes five days and five nights to meet God's "Eve Sacrifice". If it takes more than 20 days from "mountain god sacrifice" to sending god; If you count from "brewing", it will take one month at the longest.
Gangneung danoje festival's program begins with the brewing of wine. On the fifth day of the fourth lunar month, people use rice and rice koji distributed by the old yamen "Qishitang" in Jiangling to brew wine for the Dragon Boat Festival sacrifice and drinking. On April 15, "Daguanling Mountain God Sacrifice" and "Stone Country Cheng Huang Sacrifice" were held. After the sacrifice, a section of Shenmu was sawed off, and people hung green and red silks and satins on it. Then, under the guidance of Shenmu, they formed a team to meet the gods. On the evening of the third day of the fifth lunar month, they returned to Cheng Huang Temple (Jia Zheng's daughter) in Jiangling to receive the "Feng 'an Festival", that is, the Dragon Boat Festival. After the sacrifice, the tablets of Daguanling Mountain God and Buddhist Huang Cheng were sent to Nandachuan open-air sacrifice field. From the fourth day to the seventh day, a "drink offering" is held every morning. Gangneung danoje festival's sacrificial rites can be divided into "Confucian sacrificial rites" and "witchcraft sacrificial rites". Confucian-style sacrificial ceremonies are conducted in the form of Chinese prayers, which involve eliminating disasters and attracting happiness, health and tranquility, treating diseases, harvesting agriculture and fisheries, and prospering livestock and poultry. After the Confucian sacrifice, the "witchcraft sacrifice ceremony" accompanied by the musical performance began until late at night.
Gangneung danoje festival's activities are colorful. In addition to the designated ceremony (wine-making-a ceremony to send gods), witch sacrifice, official and slave masks, agricultural music competitions, children's agricultural music competitions, and Heshan Aodai ballads (all of which are intangible cultural heritages designated by regions or countries), there are many folk activities, such as China poetry creation competition, local folk song competition, national tune competition, tug-of-war, wrestling and swinging. Celebrations, such as fireworks competitions, Dragon Boat Festival lanterns, etc. ; Evening activities, such as China music performance, harp and singing. Art activities are more colorful. In addition, there are commodity transactions called "chaos".
Now, when I am in Gangneung Daye Festival, I also invite foreign folk art groups to perform, so as to enhance artistic exchanges and friendship among countries. This year, the Kyrgyzstan Troupe in Jilin Province of China and China Kunqu Opera, which is listed as the world intangible cultural heritage, participated in the performance in gangneung danoje festival.
Gangneung danoje festival, South Korea is a large-scale celebration that takes the Dragon Boat Festival as an opportunity and closely combines Korean beliefs and farming activities. Different from the Dragon Boat Festival in China, it has created rich and colorful contents and forms in the way of the Korean people, combined with their needs and aesthetics. Its ceremony, whether it is "Confucian ceremony" or "witchcraft ceremony", has maintained its original form. This primitive form is the historical value, cultural historical value and aesthetic value of the Dragon Boat Festival, and is the root of the intangible cultural heritage designated by the Korean state.
However, folk culture is constantly changing. With the progress of the times, many new contents will naturally be added, which is also very obvious in gangneung danoje festival. The organizer of Gangneung Daye Festival knows very well that "people live for tomorrow, and eager desire and ideal are the source of human life." As a folk activity, the annual Dragon Boat Festival is based on tradition, and new activities are arranged as much as possible.
This year, the seventh academic conference of the International Asian Folklore Society was held in Gangneung Dragon Boat Festival. As a major part of the Dragon Boat Festival, more than 70 scholars from 9 countries and regions, including China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Russia and Switzerland, conducted academic discussions and exchanges on the customs of the Dragon Boat Festival and the protection of intangible cultural heritage. Folk art groups from Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America were invited to perform, and the cultural activities of Gangneung in South Korea were displayed with the Dragon Boat Festival as the carrier, opening her broad mind to the world.
As mayor Jiangling said, "Just as people have their hometown, culture comes from folk customs; Just as there is affection in hometown, the root of this diversity of folk customs must also be respected. They believe that "the most regional is the most global" and the diversity of world culture is the need of human life.