Ceremony, Symbol And Order

Wang-huo, a ceremony of ignition from primitive times, is lit at the very beginning of Chinese Spring festival. It ever appeared all over China and was influential. It is a main part of Chinese traditional culture. However, for many reasons, its influence has gradually weakened. In a short time it will have completely disappeared. We found via literature searches that the academia just recorded the surface layer signs of Wang-huo, a kind of national folk-custom cultural relic which disappeared rapidly and deserved to collect, protect and record, without deep-seated attention and research.The folk-custom of Wang-huo in the county of Huai-ren, a town lies to the north of Shan-xi province, is preserved intactly. In the county of Huai-ren Wang-huo has penetrated widely to different kind of festivals which are hold in different times through one year and individual life-crisis ceremonials. So it is representative in Chinese Wang-huo culture and is provided with thick local tinge. According to the culture event of Wang-huo, the paper analysis and depicted deeply its cultural geography distributing, historical recordation and origin, ceremony scene and symbolic signification, live people who use the symbol, workmanship, social mentality which are all changed continuously. The paper also analysis and depict deeply the interaction between the folk-custom of Wang-huo and local society and economy. Through the microcosmic description of the change of the ceremony of Wang-huo, the paper reflected the social and cultural transition and interpreted deeply social significance of the cultural performance activity of Wang-huo with integrative perspective.Innovation of the paper: 1. The paper has studied by the numbers the origin of the folk-custom of Wang-huo, its cultural geography distributing, ceremony scene and symbolic meanings, social-support and its changes and so on, which padded the blankness of interrelated research. 2. The academia regarded Wang-huo as a kind of folk-custom generally. Trough field-work, we found that Wang-huo is not only a part of cult in Spring Festival, but also a part of individual life-crisis ceremonials of indigene, so it provided with characteristic of ceremony behavior. Using ceremony theory, the paper analyzed the shaping effect of the ceremony of Wang-huo to local social structure, and the reflected social order of the symbolic cultural performing activity.