The Investigation And Study On Hakka's Diet Custom In Bobai County

The consensus on Hakka who is a subbranch of Han nationality has been reached in the academia. Comparing to other nationalities, the long and winding history of migration and creation by Hakka people presents an individual character that is prominent and distinct, which has formed a unique cultural system, and therefore attracts special attention from scholars at home and abroad.Hakka people, who distributes widely, is a race whose consciousness is beyond the regional concept. Because of the different elements: natural resources in various regions; ecological environments; history of surrounding races and religious believes, Hakka communities in various regions display rich regional character and diversity on the basis of inheriting the cultural reserve of Han nationality. How to fully accurately define Hakka's culture; what the overall characteristic of Hakka's culture is and what its connotation is are still a question which need clarifying. Researchers used to mostly take the traditional Hakka communities as the object without doing enough research on the communities in other areas, which means that the examples obtained are partial thus they are lacking in macroscopic vision. This will unavoidably lead to a conclusion that is incomplete, and with the fact of drawing conclusions from a part. How to utilize a great amount of information and analyze features of Hakka's culture in different regions awaits further explorations so that the universal rules between the general character and the individual character of"the regional culture"can be grasped macroscopically.Great efforts should be made to study and develop the other Hakka communities on the basis of the current research and the broadened vision, and with the emphasis on the analysis of individual cases, which is undoubtedly significant to greatly supplement the cultural system of Hakka now. It is conducive to distinguish and analyze the definition of Hakka's culture, and define its connotation by finding the general character of Hakka's culture shared by Hakka people in different regions at first; and then summarizing the particularity of it on the preconditions of interpreting the characteristic folk custom and cultural phenomena, and in accordance of analyzing the individual cases and the whole. This is the source of the thesis.Diet culture is the integral part of a particular system of culture. It has been with the origin and development of humanity in material, spirit, institutions and culture, which is also a direct reflection of social and cultural psychology. Being a branch of folklore, the diet custom then is the key point of my thesis with the background of villages, of which Da`an village, which is a Hakka village of Longtan town, is chosen as the place of investigation where the information about the diet customs including daily diet, sacrificial diet, religious diet, banquets and diet manners has been systematically collected, and waterwheels have been examined in several aspects through interveiws, conversations, archives, observation and journals. On the basis of investigating the materials, this type of folk custom has been descriptively interpreted by the way of using comparison, functional analysis and the theory of cultural vicissitude, which has given an insight into the in-depth social psychology, and the continuation and the vicissitude of Hakka's matriarchal culture, which is derived from traditional areas in Fujian,Guangdong and Jiangxi provinces, at Bobai.The folk custom that has survived the constant changes comprises the general needs of subsistence, values ideas and aesthetic taste. If all the thing are shared by Hakka people, or they are able to embody the Hakka's culture, and the spirit of it in particular, and if the general rules can be found from them when compared with other regional Hakka cultures and changes, more people are needed to join the research and explorations so that the universal principle of using materials and the related theories could be established. This is the purpose and significance of the thesis...