介绍:
Accompanied with shout and loud music that announce the boiling of mutton broth, a large number of diners eagerly pick up their bowls and gulp down steaming stews.
This is the Fuyang festival (伏羊), an annual event held in Xu Zhou of east China's Jiangsu Province to celebrate food pertaining to lamb. It is not clear that when this festival began, but it is for sure that Chinese people have domesticated the sheep as one of the major food resources for thousands of years.
According to Zhu Jincai (朱金采), a researcher at China Academy of Management Science, lamb is not just something on the dinner table that satiates people's taste buds. To a certain extent, it also impacts the development of Chinese written language, which originated from pictographic characters.
Zhu gave several examples.
(Act1, Zhu, male, Chinese)
"It is believed that bigger sheep taste better. So the two characters 'sheep' and 'big' compose the word Mei (美), which means delicious or beautiful in Chinese. Now, when we look at the Chinese character 'envy', its upper half is the word 'sheep'; while the lower half is constituted by 'people', 'air' and 'water', which symbolizes a man drooling or gasping for breath at the sight of lamb. All of these components deliver the feeling of envy."
In the eyes of Xiao Fang (萧放), a folklore expert from Beijing Normal University, apart from language and diet, sheep also casts an enormous influence on Chinese understanding of morality and etiquette.
(Act2, Xiao, male, Chinese)
"Chinese people like to pray for good fortune. We regard sheep as a propitious animal, because its Chinese pronunciation 'Yang' sounds like the word 'Xiang', which means 'auspicious'. Meanwhile, sheep's nature makes people associate it with some edifying moral virtues, such as beauty and kindness. Moreover, the gregarious sheep represent people who are social but never clannish. "
Professor Xiao agreed that the spirit of sheep shares congruence with Chinese national characteristics, but also emphasized that it doesn't mean irresolution or weakness.
(Act3, Xiao, male, Chinese)
"The softness and benevolence of sheep could overcome hardness. You know, since sheep always gore bad people with horns, they symbolize justice as well. If you check out the word 'justice' from traditional Chinese characters, it is formed up by the characters 'sheep' and 'myself'. "
Since baby lambs drink milk from mothers on their knees, the animal has been widely regarded as the symbol of filial piety, which is embodied by many folk customs.
Here is Xiao Fang again. .
(Act4, Xiao, male, Chinese)
"Take Hebei Province for example, on the second day of July on Chinese lunar calendar, uncles on mothers' side will give sheep to nephews, aiming to remind them to be filial to their mothers. Of course we are not talking about real sheep here but sheep made from flour. We call the day as Song Yang Jie (送羊节), the Sheep-giving Festival. "
However, the goat culture is not just celebrated by Han people.
(music clip of "The Song of Goat")
At Maoding County of Yunnan Province, nearly every Yi family raises goats. On the eve of the Chinese New Year, Yi people will paste couplets on their sheepcotes and even prepare an elaborate dinner for the livestock.
On the vast grassland of west China, Kazak and Uyghur people play their traditional sport: Buzkashi. Riders on horses will be separated into two different teams and perform their stunts to get a goat carcass toward a goal.
Yi Na (意娜), a Tibetan culture researcher at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said.
(Act5, Yi, female, Chinese)
"Maybe because goats have been domesticated from an early period in history, so it more or less has some sacred elements in each culture. Take the primitive religion in Tibet for example, it had 360 shepherd gods and people worshipped sheep totems. Based on Bon, (the indigenous religion of Tibet), sheep is portrayed as a god of protection. Since sheep is closely related to our daily life, you could find their traces in folk culture as well. For instance, many cultures believe that if you attach the images of door god on each side of an entry, the evil will be driven away. But for Tibetan, a sheep head will be hung on the door instead of the poster of door god. "
Yi Na also added that for every Year of Goat, devout locals will pay pilgrimage to Lake Nam, one of the holy lakes to Tibetans.
It seems that although the perception of goat has varied throughout the time. The goat culture is still impacting Chinese people in food, language, ethics, and everyday life to this day.
For Studio Plus, this is Li Ningjing.
大家还在听
