The Re-ritualization Of Dragon Boat Festival Customs In Jiaxing

Nowadays, a lot of folk culture, which were been interrupted for a long time,have been returned for the governments’ construction, and are even being a typicalsymbol of modern culture. Then, Jiaxing is a representative case. Even though thisresult has many complex reasons and arguments, scholars discussed it from differentviews. The existed study of Dragon Boat Festival culture are mostly being focusedon the description of dispersive folkways for a long time, few of studies are from theview of whole ritual. However, things can be changed everywhere and every day inmodern time, it does need a whole view to do some further study. In this paper, itwill discuss Dragon Boat Festival culture from the view of Re-ritualization, whichcan be viewed a process, from the traditional to the modern.This paper is based on the investigation of Chang’an town, Haining, Jiaxing, bydescribing the traditional Dragon Boat Festival custom and reconstructed DragonBoat Festival culture, to observe the Re-ritualizational process of from traditional tomodern, then to reveal that some Dragon Boat Festival cultural activities are theRituals’ Aggregations. Furthermore, raise the idea that the next research for Rituals’Aggregation should overstep the single ritual’s study, which will be better tounderstand the modern Dragon Boat Festival culture. The concrete context is that:First, give the idea that we can understand the different qualities of traditional andmodern rituals by “Folk Ritual” and “Government Ritual”; Secondly, describe andanalyze the process of Re-ritualization, to expound the idea that the modern DragonBoat Festival ritual is one of important mechanisms to construct local culture; Last,from the above description and analysis of ritual concepts and the process ofRe-ritualization, try to offer a new view to change the narrow sense concept of ritual.The paper have six chapters. Chapter one is a summary to the existed study toget the developing areas. Chapter two is an overview of Chang’an town andChang’an Dragon Boat Festival customs. Chapter three is to discuss the Chang’antraditional Dragon Boat Festival rituals. Chapter four is to analyze the Chang’an modern Dragon Boat Festival rituals. Chapter five is to reveal the logic ofre-ritualization by the contrastive analysis between the traditional and the modern.Chapter six is a conclusion to the whole paper.By the whole analyzing, we can draw the following three conclusions:conclusion one, the traditional Dragon Boat Festival ritual can be called “FolkRitual”, and the modern Dragon Boat Festival ritual can be called “GovernmentRitual”. Conclusion two, the modern Dragon Boat Festival ritual which had gonethrough the process of Re-ritualization does be a important mechanism to constructlocal culture. Conclusion three, the relevant modern Dragon Boat Festival culturalactivities are the Rituals’ Aggregations. So the next research should be aware of it, todeeper the understanding of ritual.