A "middle Ring" "the World"

Yizhou, located in the center of the west of Linnan area, it connects the southwest(Yunnan and Guizhou provinces) and southeast(Guangdong and Fujjian provinces) areas together from the imperial age till now. From Tang to Song dynasty this region played a great important role at the southern frontier of ancient China, especially during the military and civilization procedure. The central government of Yuan, Ming and Qing set guard towns along the Xiajian-Longjiang river which flows across Yi zhou from west to east, in order to repress the rebellion of "ManYi". In the same time immigrants of Han,Miao and Yao people moved in and settled along the riversides from east and west. The local conceptions of culture and memory of past were built while different groups of folk mixed together and got fused. Nowadays the folk society of Yizhou may seem to have lost its own history and tradition, but in the deep site of the social structure, there has been a long term of history that people re-enacted to forget and rebuilt their memories. This type of social structure is symbolized by a system consisted of popular religions and ritual-performances. The basic part of this symbolism system represents the connection of imperial and local world.The characters of Yizhou's social structure, history memory, popular religion and art performance have rooted in both origin and immigrant groups. As the legends and belief about Moyi Dawang and Wuping Dawang showed similar features when spread in different region around Yizhou and Tianhe: their trips towards to the sacred world were the end of live in the secular world. The outside, Luyucheng, who taught Wu, was seclusion at Huixian hill, at north of the central of Yizhou, Qingyuan county, after death Wu became a guardian of Tianhe. It was the outside power he got from Taoist of Yizhou led him to be a spirit after failure. The process of this type of motive is popular at Yizhou. The narrative represented a pattern that people dispelled their frustrations and embedded them into legends and sacred world, so as to get over the failure or pressure when encountered the military or political power of the state.In the long history that the local society was founded, ritual performances around religion and art, such as the ceremonies of Qingming festival and the Sheri, one integrates the community of a clan and the other integrates the community of all clans in a village. "Zuo She" indicates the plea of flourishing and affirms the village-guardian's power. The pilgrimage system symbolized a connection between inside and outside/upside and downside, including the king, noble class scholar-bureaucrat, and folk class, as a caste system.Many of the specialists of religion ritual also act as a folksong singer(Shange Shou), local elites. Shange, Caidiao and Guiju represent the art performance system in the local society, as well as the ritual specialists. Both of the performances are parts of the concept of "Tianxia"system. Though the dramas travelled to Yizhou late until Qing dynasty with more complicated patterns and stories than Shange, their development is based on the same model as Shange, especially Caidiao, which is antiphonally sang and performed by both males and females. Just as the ritual specialist also plays different roles and builds a likely pattern. The female specialist-Yajin, Fatong represent sorcery and prophecy in the ritual by singing songs without notes, the male-Daogong, Guishi represents Daochang in the ritual by singing and reading songs with notes. These people are Mediator between heaven and earth who connect the sacred and secular of local worlds.In a conclusion, the great history and local history, imperial world and local world were symbolized by male and female/inside and outside/central and edge. All of these ritual and art performances represent and build the local world of conception. As the middle part of intermediate circle(Zhongjian quan), the research about Yizhou shows us how the history was changed from migrating to settling down, and how the local conception was kept a stable structure while their history changed in a long period.