Wuchuan people hold the annual ceremony, often the whole village. People in the surrounding villages are not allowed to watch the fun, and every household holds a banquet to entertain relatives and friends. Therefore, "making an annual rule" is also called "eating an annual rule". In the sixties and seventies of last century, the annual regulations were once regarded as the "four olds" and were once interrupted, but the content of "eating" in the annual regulations still existed.
The annual banquet is the highlight of Wuchuan's annual banquet. Wuchuan people who love to look at their faces and make fun pay special attention to the "performance" of New Year's Eve. They are willing to make money all the year round, spend New Year's Eve, and have to give a banquet to relatives and friends once or twice if they are short of money. It is common for foreman bosses and wealthy families to spend tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of yuan on dozens of banquets for one or two hundred people. The purpose of making annual regulations is to attract more relatives and friends to catch up with the excitement. The more people eat the annual regulations, the more beautiful the cars parked at the door, and the more face they have. You only need to send a message to eat the New Year's Eve, you don't need to send an invitation, and guests don't need a gift. Some wealthy families even give "red envelopes" to relatives and friends who eat New Year's Eve. Some people have food, clothes and money. Why not make a law? As a result, many people will come every time, uninvited, and will also invite friends to entertain the host. The host spent money to earn enough popularity. As long as people are busy and feel decent, they don't care who you are or whether you know them. Therefore, many people make a joke of "I don't know who to invite after eating the annual regulations".
Wuchuan people are hospitable and generous, and holiday banquets are quite famous in western Guangdong. There are no banquets twice a year. Every banquet has one or twenty courses. In addition to traditional fried chicken, fish balls, loin rolls, eight-treasure rice and spiced pork, cashews, rare mushrooms, white fructose, prawns, water fish, sea cucumbers, scallops, pomfrets and so on. It is common to spend one or two thousand yuan on each banquet. The luxury and richness of Wuchuan's New Year's Eve dinner are amazing, and there is no other place in western Guangdong. When a few large families in Wuchuan celebrate the New Year, they will also invite chefs from big hotels to set up complete sets of tableware and set up buffets in their own homes to entertain relatives and friends. All kinds of Chinese food (including shark's fin soup) and western cakes are ready-to-eat and "free to eat", which has raised the New Year's Eve dinner to a new height. Lantern Festival is the most concentrated and lively season in Wuchuan, among which Lu Mei's large-scale lively Lantern Festival celebrations and annual activities have long been famous in western Guangdong. During the Lantern Festival from the 14th day of the first month to the 18th day of the first month, it is the year of Meilong and its surrounding places such as Wayao, Haige, Getang, Meiling and Meilong. At this time of year, these communities and villages will make clay sculptures, build flower bridges, archways and flower pagodas, and make fluttering colors for people to watch from the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first month. On the 16th and 17th of the first month, they also organized thousands of honor guards, floats and folk art teams to March around the city, attracting hundreds of thousands of people from all over the country every year, forming a famous brand and a unique annual culture of celebrating the Lantern Festival in Wuchuan.
Wuchuan City-Wuchuan Yuanxiao and Meilong Town are famous for their folk arts. Guangdong Provincial People's Government awarded the title of "Hometown of Folk Art" to Meilong Town, Wuchuan City. The four unique folk arts in Lumei Town are floating colors, clay sculptures, flower bridges and flower pagodas, which have attracted countless tourists from home and abroad for many years. The origin of the "Four Musts" is closely related to the "Year" in Meilong Town, because in the "Year", all kinds of traditional Han arts should be shown to the gods as much as possible. The calendar years in Meilong Town are the 15th, 16th and 17th of the first lunar month. Therefore, from the historical origin of offering sacrifices to gods over the years, Meilong Town has developed the "four wonders" of Wuchuan folk art. Bodhisattva went out of the temple and toured the villages in the "social environment". Each village was not allowed to have one or several "places for offering cups", which was the highlight of the "New Year's Regulations". Several tables of the Eight Immortals were placed on each "plot", and the villagers picked out the best fruits, cakes and sweets from home, put them in pots and put them on the tables of the Eight Immortals for the Bodhisattva to "enjoy". In the old days, a Taoist priest threw a "cup ratio" (cut a log into two pieces and threw it on the ground when asking God, with two sections called Yang ratio, two sections called Yin ratio and one section called Sheng ratio).
Fireworks and firecrackers were set off at the ceremony, and there was a lion dance performance. At noon on New Year's Day, there are also worship and "posing". The form of "sacrifice" is the same as "sacrifice", but the difference is that the sacrifice is changed from fruit, cake and sugar to "three animals" (chicken, pork and fish). In Meilutou Village, Wuchuan, on the 18th day of the first lunar month and the 5th day of March, we have to mention the dance performance of the brave.
This custom comes from an old legend. It is said that long ago, people here lived a peaceful and quiet life. One day, a fierce beast suddenly came. It is said that raccoons look like lions, but they are fiercer than lions. It eats birds and animals when it sees them, and bites people when it sees them, which makes people relish it. One day, a woodcutter went to the mountain to cut wood and was arrested and eaten. This happened to meet the land god, who desperately came forward to rescue him, but his skill was not enough and he was defeated in less than a few rounds. Later, he told the Emperor Tian Xuan (the Northern Emperor) in the Arctic about his evil deeds. The Northern Emperor sent a boy named Wei Zi to see him with a golden seal. Although Wei Zi boy has high martial arts and infinite magic, he is not a brave opponent. After dozens of rounds, he gradually lost ground. At the center of this sense of urgency, there is a kind of fraud and failure to be eaten by the brave. The Wei Zi boy in the belly of the brave soldier kicked, beat and rolled in pain in despair. I had to beg for mercy and was willing to surrender. Wei Zi used it as a mount. Since then, the mountains have returned to peace. Wei Zi's surrender took place on the fifth day of the third lunar month. In order to thank the Northern Emperor for sending Wei Zi boys to exterminate insects for the people and facilitate their work, the local people designated this day as the birthday of the Northern Emperor. In addition, Wei Zichen's process of serving the brave has been arranged, and every year in the first month of the eighteenth year and March of the fifth year (the birthday of the Northern Emperor), he will dance as a commemoration. Wuchuan people have a strong cultural flavor. Besides lion dancing, dancing and dancing, there are also folk songs, puppet shows and dramas.
In the past, some villages invited people to sing folk songs. Wuchuan folk songs are quasi-seven-character quatrains, rhyming and plain in language. When singing, build a singing platform and invite three people to sing, a singer and a singer (female, called girl or singer). Leprosy patients acted before liberation, and most of them were blind at the beginning of liberation. At the beginning of the concert, the singer and sister entered the music scene, first singing the song "Congratulations to God" and then singing a duet. The songs sung can be roughly divided into acacia songs, ancient songs, ci songs, material songs and spinning stories, and stories of falling south (referring to making a living in Nanyang). After singing, sing with "Song Jiao" (Song Jiao is a person who likes singing among the masses and is in a hurry. The climax of the concert is that the singer and the song match the right song. When I was a child (in the late 1960s), a folk song art festival was held in my hometown, which is still fresh in my memory. Unfortunately, the Folk Song Festival has also disappeared in Wuchuan.
Puppet shows are also staged in some villages. Wuchuan people call puppet shows "ghost shows" and "ghost shows". There are three kinds of puppet shows in Wuchuan: one is a one-man puppet show, which is popular in Changqi, Shallow Water and Shi Lan; The other is a small class puppet, which is popular in the towns in the southwest of Wuchuan, singing Wuchuan folk songs; And the other is a puppet in big class, also called Cantonese Opera Puppet, singing Cantonese Opera. Some large classes, such as matinee puppet shows and evening performances, are also called yin-yang classes. Puppets in small classes and big classes have basically disappeared, and there are a few single puppet classes, most of which are old artists in their sixties and seventies.
Put on a big show. Wu has always called Cantonese opera "a play". Drama has a broad mass base in Wuchuan. In the 1960s and 1970s, almost every village had a troupe. After the reform and opening up, almost every village will stage a big drama every year. At the end of each year, the government organizes a booking party for the spring class of Cantonese Opera, and the performance agents from Guangdong and Guangxi Cantonese Opera Troupes fill the venue. In some wealthy villages, with a venue of nearly 100,000 yuan, the Guangdong Opera Troupe can perform for ten consecutive nights. In some villages, two Cantonese opera troupes were invited to perform for several nights at the same time.
Although Wuchuan's ancient festival activities are full of superstition, they also have positive significance that cannot be ignored. It not only connects family ties and friendship, adds festive atmosphere and promotes local traditional culture, but also stimulates the growth of exaggerated consumption and promotes economic development.