Bai Ghost Festival Ceremony Research

The Hungry Ghost Festival (the Zhongyuan Festival) ,which is a popular and traditional festival celebrated on the 14^th day of the 7^th lunar month by the Hans and other ethnic groups in China. Since its inherent characters and the judgment of superstition, the investigation and study on the Hungry Ghost Festival never attracted enough academic attention. This thesis is a Hungry Ghost Festival (also called "The 14^th day of the 7^th lunar month" in Dali) study on a Bai nationality's village, called Longkan in Dali, Yunnan province. It will explore the folk ceremony and sacrifice ritual in the festival.Based on the materials acquired from the fieldwork, this thesis will interpret the process and intrinsic functions of the folk ceremony and sacrifice ritual in the Hungry Ghost Festival. This Festival has its own mechanism, including two sacrifice ritual systems, namely family sacrifice and village sacrifice system, and two sexual organizations, namely "Dongjing" and "Lianchi" ,which all have significant functions in the festival, and consequently construct a distinctive festival culture space and display the villagers' deep belief . Besides the explanation of the ceremony and ritual, it also explores the traditional meaning of the Hungry Ghost Festival. The thesis describes a dynamic changing process of the Hungry Ghost Festival depending on the oral materials got in the field work.The first chapter introduces the context including natural and social situation about Dali and Longkan respectively; Based upon the materials acquired in the field work, the second chapter is a ethnography about the village's Hungry Ghost Festival; The third chapter is a "deep description" of the folk ceremony and sacrifice ritual; Owing to the former three chapters, The fourth chapter wants to show the villagers' public memory by the analysis of oral history materials. The last part is a comment on the change of Longkan's Hungry Ghost Festival.