Spring, summer, autumn and winter have different seasons. Although it seems that the four seasons are no longer distinct in today's weather conditions, looking back on the past, in the life that Songjiang people are accustomed to, the food, living, festivals, and folk activities in the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter are all different. Skills, music, dance, leisure and entertainment are also exciting.
today will take you closer to the summer in Shanghai Songjiang Folk Map. Starting from the fifth month of the lunar calendar, the weather is getting hotter and various diseases are prone to occur. Therefore, the ancients called May the "evil month". Rice grows vigorously and requires careful care. Most of the customs in summer are to pray for good health, no disease, no disasters, no drought or flood, and to ensure the healthy growth of grain seedlings.
Summer Diet
People in Songjiang must eat grass noodles and broad beans in the Beginning of Summer. On that day, boiled meat dipped in minced garlic, cherries, green plums, sugar cane, needles, sea clams, bamboo shoots, boiled eggs, salted eggs, etc. are also seasonal foods. Grind new wheat flour, mix it with sugar, and roll it into inch-long "wheat silkworms" to feed the children. It is believed that it can avoid "sick summer".
Eating rice dumplings during the Dragon Boat Festival. Drink realgar wine for lunch, and prepare yellow croaker, eel, cucumber, and yellow mud eggs (ie salted eggs) for lunch, which are combined into "five yellows", which means "five kings" to suppress the "five poisons". Seasonal foods also include loquat, garlic, etc.
The sixth day of the sixth lunar month is Tiankuang Festival. Eating soup and water cakes is believed to prevent summer diseases.
On the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar, there is the "Qiao Qiao Festival". Before the festival, Qiaoguo and puff pastry dumplings are made. Friends and relatives give gifts to each other.
On the 14th day of the seventh lunar month, I drank soy milk and ate fried dough sticks at night, thinking it would improve my eyesight.
In midsummer, Songjiang people like to eat pickled small eggplants as a summer dish, which is fragrant and refreshing. The small eggplant is a specialty of Songjiang and is called "Little Luosu". Its color and shape are the same as ordinary eggplants, but when grown it is only about the size of an average person's thumb and is only used for pickling or sauce. Add salt to the eggplant and rub it repeatedly until soft, then press it with a stone slab for three to four hours, and then it is ready to eat. It is called "Kneading Luosu". If it is made with sauce, put the pickled eggplants into the sauce and dry them in the hot sun for three to five days. Shi Zhecun's "Small Records of Yunjianyu": "For summer dinner, people eat more fried rice, make tea, wash the rice with tea, and serve it with a plate of pinched Suzhou. Although the Chinese family is the same, the people are frugal. ”
Dragon Boat Festival
The Dragon Boat Festival is the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, also known as the Duanyang Festival and Zhongtian Festival. A few days before the festival, every family uses new bamboo baskets to make rice dumplings, and relatives and friends give each other rice dumplings, colorful ropes, mugwort flowers, and painted fans. Use rice dumplings to worship the stove.
At the gate and in front of the bed, calamus, mugwort and garlic are hung. At noon, smoke the house with Atractylodes Angelica dahurica and other drugs. Use realgar to write the word "king" on the child's forehead, and wear a rue purse, small rice dumplings wrapped with five-color threads, garlic, and a tiger head made of yellow silk on the chest to ward off evil and eliminate poison. When people cook rice dumplings, they add eggs and boil them together. After removing the shells, they are commonly known as "white eggs". It is said that if children eat them on Dragon Boat Festival, their skin will be as smooth as eggs and they will not have boils or scars.
Newlyweds prepare yellow croaker, loquat, ham and other gifts back to their parents' home, which is called "summer gift". Then, the natal family prepares summer clothes, parasols, straw hats and other items, and the elder brother or younger brother makes a special trip to deliver them to the son-in-law's family, which is called "summer clothes delivery".
During the Dragon Boat Festival, the dragon boat race is held as usual in Bailongtan. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the lake gradually became shallower, and due to wars, the ceremony was stopped. Since the 21st century, dragon boat races have been resumed at Huating Lake. Dragon boat teams are selected to participate in the competition every year, and motorboat races, performances and other events have been added. By then, the Huating Lakeside will be crowded with people, making it an annual event.
Sijing Zongzi
In the 19th year of Guangxu's reign in the Qing Dynasty (1893), Zhou Guangli founded Yanshou Zhai Zongzi shop in , Sijing Town, which is famous for its distribution of Guangli meat rice dumplings in the Songhu area. Rectangular rice dumplings, each weighing about 50 grams, with more meat and less rice, cooked with old juice and old soup. It is characterized by loose, fresh, refreshing, fragrant and crisp. During the Republic of China, some people brought rice dumplings to Beijing as gifts to relatives and friends in the summer, and they did not spoil for a week.
Yanshouzhai closed on the eve of the Anti-Japanese War. Since then, Duoshouzhai and Yishouzhai rice dumpling shops have been opened in Sijing Town one after another. The specifications and quality are similar. Thanks to the reputation of Guangli meat rice dumplings, the sales are still very good.
After the reform and opening up, self-employed Wang Peihua and Zhang Xiaomei inherited the recipe and craftsmanship of Guangli Zongzi and opened a Guangli Zongzi shop on Jiangchuan Road, Sijing Town, and the business was booming.In 2006, Sijing Guangli Meat Rice Dumplings was recognized as a famous snack in Shanghai by the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce and the Shanghai Culinary Association.
Lotus Festival
Xinbang There are many water surfaces in the town. Xinbang people are good at planting aquatic plants, especially lotus. In recent years, nearly a thousand acres of lotus have been planted, creating a beautiful landscape of lotus flowers reflecting the sun and green leaves stretching to the sky.
There are nearly 800 varieties of lotus in Xinbang, including "Florida Sunset" with flowers as big as your face, "Purple Jenny" with flowers as small as nails, and "Wanweisha", the world champion of new water lily varieties. Ornamental aquatic plants that are comparable to lotus include melaleuca, blue-flowered pickerel grass, white-flowered pickerel grass, Zaili flower, water poppy, etc. Their flowering period is at the same time as the lotus, and each will show its grace and beauty with the blooming lotus. Combined into a perfect scenery.
In 2010, the first Xinbang Lotus Festival was held, and it has been held from July to August every year since then. The Lotus Festival uses Xuelang Lake Ecological Park as the main venue, with Lotus Commune and Yule Wharf as branch venues. In addition to viewing thousands of acres of lotus, there are also a series of rural activities related to lotus.
Crystal Pear Festival
In the 1950s, pear trees were first planted in Cangqiao area. In the late 1990s, excellent varieties were introduced and the planting area expanded year by year. In early 2000, the Songjiang Cangqiao Crystal Pear Demonstration Base was established, and the Shanghai Songjiang District Pear Research Institute was established; the "Cangqiao Crystal Pear" trademark was registered with the State Administration for Industry and Commerce.
Cangqiao Crystal Pear has successively won the honors of high-quality agricultural products from the Ministry of Agriculture, green food A-level products from China Green Food Development Center, and famous brands of Chinese agricultural and sideline products. In August 2007, it was recognized as the "Recommended Fruit for the Beijing Olympics". In 2017, Cangqiao Crystal Pear entered the green export express lane and was Shanghai’s first export product from the National Geographical Indication Protection Demonstration Zone.
Cangqiao Crystal Pear is on the market with more than 50,000 kilograms per year. There are 17 main varieties such as "Zaosheng Xinshui", "Changshou" and "Xizilu", and more than 30 germplasm resource varieties such as "Golden Pear", "Zaomeisu" and "August Su". They are all high-quality early and medium-ripening pear varieties, with the characteristics of juicy, sweet, refreshing fragrance, tender white flesh, crispy, crystal clear, and rich nutrition.
In 2008, Shanghai's first Cangqiao Crystal Pear Science and Technology Culture Festival was held, which included family adoption and ordering of pear trees, Cangqiao Crystal Pear essay solicitation, advertising word collection and evaluation, "Return to Nature" summer camp, parent-child learning and farming experience, pear orchard picking and winning One-day tour to Qiang Cinema and other activities. Since then, the cultural festival has been held regularly from July to August every year, and new activity forms and content have been continuously added to the original basis. Visitors can enjoy wonderful opera, folk arts, song and dance performances, and participate in Cangqiao while tasting crystal pears. Crystal Pear Photography Competition, visits to the Pear Culture Museum, and other various activities.
July 14th
The 14th day of the seventh lunar month is the birthday of Songjiang Prefecturecity god Li Daiwen. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Qing troops moved south, and Li Daiwen, Chen Zilong and others organized volunteers to resist the Qing Dynasty. When the west gate of Songjiang Fucheng was lost, Li Daiwen hanged himself with a rope. He was captured before he died. He refused to surrender and died generously. In the early Qing Dynasty, the rule was strict and the people of Songjiang could not mourn Li Daiwen in public. So every year on the night of the 14th day of the seventh lunar month, people used fried dough sticks and soy milk instead of noodles to express their respect. After the Qing regime stabilized its rule, in order to win over people's hearts and commend the loyal ministers and martyrs of the Ming Dynasty, Li Daiwen was named the Songjiang Prefecture City God by the Qing Dynasty and was worshiped with a statue. However, eating fried dough sticks and drinking soy milk on July 14th has become a custom and has been preserved to this day. There is also a saying that eating these two foods on that day can improve eyesight. In the afternoon of that day, all snack shops in Songjiang City served soy milk and fried dough sticks, and citizens rushed to buy them, which became a unique folk custom in Songjiang City.
Yexie soft cake
The production of Yexie soft cake began in the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, with the founder Shi Maolong. The raw materials are high-quality white japonica rice and glutinous rice. The rice is soaked in water for seven days, and the water is changed every day to evaporate all the fermented ingredients in the rice. The soaked rice is ground into powder with a stone mortar, and then sieved three times with a fine sieve. The powder is extremely fine and lined with lotus leaves. The cake is steamed with fine white sugar and various fillings. Soft cakes will not go bad during the summer weeks.
There are three types of soft cakes: one is plain cake, which is added with soft white sugar and steamed into large rectangles.The second is the square cake, which is filled with lard and bean paste, and is in the shape of a square; the third is the sweet-scented osmanthus and white sugar glutinous rice cake, which is made of glutinous rice, added with osmanthus, filled with lard and bean paste, and is in the shape of a disk.
The three kinds of cakes have their own characteristics. The plain cake is loose and soft, with feather-shaped knife marks, and can be separated at will. It is moderately sweet and fragrant. It is sold by the pound. With mint, it is a good summer meal; the square cake is fat, fragrant and delicious. Sweet; Osmanthus white sugar glutinous rice cake has the characteristics of loose, soft, sweet, fragrant and fat, with a little mint, it has a cooling feeling, especially in summer, it is the best kind. Cheap and good quality, deeply loved by customers. Yexie soft cakes are available in various varieties and packaging styles for customers to choose from.
In 2011, Shanghai rice cake (Yexie soft cake) production skills were selected into the third batch of Songjiang District intangible cultural heritage list and the third batch of Shanghai intangible cultural heritage list. The protection unit is Songjiang District Intangible Cultural Heritage List. The protection unit is Yexie Town, Songjiang District Cultural and Sports Service Center.
Dragon Dance (Grass Dragon Dance)
Dragon Dance (Grass Dragon Dance) is popular in Yexie, Huayangqiao and other places. According to folklore, in the early years of the Tang Dynasty, Ye Xie suffered from a severe drought. People tied straw with dragons to pray for rain. Seeing this, Han Xiangzi , one of the "Eight Immortals", blew his sacred flute to summon the green dragon from the East China Sea, and heavy rain poured down in an instant. In order to repay Han Xiangzi's kindness of "playing the flute and summoning the dragon", the people would hold sacrificial activities on the 13th day of the fifth month and the 13th day of the ninth month of the lunar calendar. They danced with grass dragons to welcome Han Xiangzi and the Green Dragon King and pray for good weather. The grass dragon uses bamboo strips as its skeleton, and its body is made of straw. The big grass dragon is four feet long and divided into four sections. It has an ox's head, a tiger's mouth, antlers, a snake's body, an eagle's claws, and a phoenix's tail. With the big grass dragon as the protagonist, there are seven dances and nine dances; a small grass dragon dances by one person, accompanying him and playing a supporting role. It is accompanied by dances such as rolling lanterns, aquatic lanterns, and horse lanterns, as well as the "harvest dance" composed of 8 village girls. The ceremony is divided into seven procedures: praying, moving clouds, praying for rain, fetching water, making rain, rolling the dragon, and returning to the palace. Offerings include old rice, wheat, beans, melons, carps, etc.
There is no "dragon pearl" in the grass dragon dance. The person pretending to be Han Xiangzi dances the flute to attract the dragon, using the flute instead of the pearl. The props used by the Grass Dragon to pray for rain and the bamboo hats, shawls and straw sandals worn by the performers are all made of straw, forming the unique style of the Grass Dragon Dance.
Grass dragon dance has slow movements, simple rhythms of gongs and drums, and simple movements, such as the "Praying for Rain" section, where the dragon body lies down, its head looks up to the sky and bows, and the movements are stagnant, showing the scene of the old dragon praying to the gods. In the "Getting Water" section, the dragon's body is tightly coiled, and its head is raised and swung repeatedly to show that the old dragon is sucking water. In the "Rainfall" section, the monks in the temple first splash the water in the basin, and then the village girls continuously pour the water in the basin to the audience, which means "splashing dragon water". Sprinkling the dragon water is considered auspicious. The audience competes to let the village girl splash water to the audience. The ceremony reaches its climax.
During the severe drought in June 1950, some villagers spontaneously danced with grass dragons to pray for rain. They were criticized as engaging in feudal superstition activities, and the grass dragon dance was discontinued from then on. In 1986, the cultural station organized old artists to restore the original ecological ceremony of the grass dragon praying for rain, and listed it as a traditional cultural heritage for protection. In 2007 and 2008, Dragon Dance (Grass Dragon Dance) was announced as the first batch of Shanghai intangible cultural heritage list and the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage expansion project list. The protected unit is the Cultural and Sports Service Center of Yexie Town, Songjiang District.
Xinbang Folk Songs
Xinbang Folk Songs, also known as rice farming folk songs and field folk songs, are folk songs that rice farmers sing together when they are farming rice. Before the founding of the People's Republic of China, every natural village in Xinbang Town had a folk song class. During the rice farming season in midsummer, folk songs were heard endlessly, and it was known as the "Hometown of Field Folk Songs."
Cultivating rice, that is, cultivating and weeding, is a heavy workload. One season of rice must be cultivated three times. In order to catch up with the work, large farmers often hire dozens of rice cultivators. During the work, the hired workers sang folk songs casually to relieve fatigue and express their emotions and wishes. Over time, distinctive rice cultivator folk songs were formed. Most of the folk songs of Yun Dao are sung by one person, and everyone harmonizes with each other, and everyone has a role.
Xinbang folk songs, regardless of lyrics and music, have a strong Jiangnan water town charm. They are simple and vivid, the lyrics are natural and appropriate, concise and easy to remember, and the tunes are beautiful and moving. Especially in long narrative folk songs, the description of emotions, scenes, objects, sounds, and shapes all have high aesthetic value. Talented singers can often improvise and create on the spot.The content of folk songs includes both historical legends and seasonal creations, expressing the lives, thoughts and emotions of farmers in Jiangnan water towns. The most beautiful among them are love story folk songs. Xinbang mountain songs have a high pitch, large fluctuations in melody, and the singing rhythm is loose and free. The melody moves more in the high-pitched area, and the singer sings with a combination of real and false voices.
A large number of long, medium and short field folk songs have been excavated, collected and sorted out in Xinbang area, which have high academic and artistic value. The long folk narrative Tianshan songs "Sister Zhuang" and "Sister Liu" were selected into the "Top Ten Folk Narrative Poems in Jiangnan", filling the gap in long narrative poems of the Han nation.
In 2011, the Xinbang Folk Song Project was announced as the third batch of Songjiang District Intangible Cultural Heritage List and the third batch of Shanghai Intangible Cultural Heritage List. The protection unit is the Songjiang District Xinbang Town Cultural and Sports Service Office.
Hatch Teahouse
Hatch Teahouse, that is, drinking tea in a teahouse, is the most traditional way of leisure for Songjiang people. At the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, folk "Ci Pai Zaqu" became popular, and itinerant singers appeared in teahouses. In the Qing Dynasty, Suzhou Pingtan flourished. Wu Nong's soft language and delicate expressions were loved by the public. Artists sold their art in teahouses, and teahouses used artists to increase tea supplies. During the Republic of China, "there were no fewer than hundreds of teahouses in urban and rural areas throughout the county."
The elderly have the habit of drinking morning tea, so the teahouse opens at four or five o'clock in the morning. The morning is the peak time for teahouse business, and all teahouses are full almost every day. At lunch time, the number of tea-goers gradually became less frequent. Teahouses that do not have night markets usually close at three or four o'clock in the afternoon.
Before the founding of the People's Republic of China, construction workers, dock workers, businessmen, civil servants, literati, etc. all had their own teahouses for gathering, and it was not easy to go to other teahouses to drink tea. Chatting over tea in the teahouse, discussing the classics of mountains and seas, discussing the current situation, and exchanging news are the basic contents. Businessmen use teahouses to negotiate business, which is called commercial teahouses; dock workers and construction workers usually split their bills in teahouses; literati eat scented tea in teahouses, talk about romance, exchange calligraphy and painting, and compare poems and articles; enemies fight and gangs have conflicts, so they hire intermediaries to help them. Teahouses mediate and calm down the situation, which is called "eat and talk about tea" and "talk about opening up"; private economic debts, children's marriages, neighborhood disputes and other matters do not want to alarm the government, so they are judged and mediated in teahouses. Teahouses are also called "hundred-mouth yamen".
Since the 1990s, many new teahouses with the names of "Tea House" and "Tea Garden" have been opened in Songjiang City. Most of them are divided into private rooms, with elegant decoration and luxurious facilities, which has changed the pattern and operation mode of old teahouses. The elderly activity rooms in every village in the countryside have tea rooms for villagers to drink tea, relax and play mahjong. There are teahouses in Songjiang Fangta Garden and Zuibai Pond with low fees. They are good places for friends to gather, relax, play cards and chess.
Listening to books
Drinking tea and listening to books were often held together. During the Republic of China, in addition to professional bookstores, five out of ten Songjiang teahouses had bookstores.
Storytelling includes: Pingtan , commonly known as "small book"; Pinghua, commonly known as "big book"; Talking about cause and effect, also known as "cymbal book", and after the founding of the People's Republic of China, it was called "peasant book". The bookstore is divided into afternoon and evening sessions. People in Songjiang love to listen to books. When meeting famous actors, they often cannot buy tickets. Some old listeners often buy out the tickets for each performance of a book.
Bozishu started as a street performer. The storyteller holds a single cymbal in his left hand and a thin bamboo stick in his right hand, strikes the cymbals to accompany the music, speaks in local accents, and alternately speaks and sings. Cymbals are divided into Dongxiang tune and Xixiang tune. Dongxiang tune is emphasized and the tune is vigorous and simple; Xixiang tune is emphasized and the tune is more euphemistic. Since the late Qing Dynasty, cymbal calligraphers have often performed in Songjiang Yue Temple. Several benches were arranged under a big tree. The audience sat or stood in a circle, mostly farmers who went to the city to do business. Artists mostly rap about books that are familiar to the public, such as "Yue Jia Jiang" and "Guan Yunchang". Each book takes about ten days to sing. When the storyteller reaches "Guanzi", he stops and asks the audience for money with his cymbal in hand, relying on the audience to provide for themselves. A book discussion was held three or two times. Later, cymbals were introduced to bookstores and were mainly performed in teahouses and bookstores.
After the reform and opening up, in response to the requests of book lovers, Songjiang Cultural Department restored bookstores many times in Songjiang Theater, Workers Club and other places. At present, there is a fixed bookstore in the Songjiang Workers' Cultural Palace, where Pingtan or Peasants' Books are performed all year round. Some community cultural centers also often invite storytellers to perform from time to time.
