Significance Of The Network

This article is ethnography of the "Zhong Yuan Festival" in a Chinese Village. The festival is also called the "Mid-July Days" or the "Ghost Festival". It is from July 1st to 15th on the lunar calendar. I did the fieldwork in a small village called "the willow village" in Shuangliu (two willows) town, Xinzhou district of Wuhan city. The place is in my hometown. The research I did is an attempt of hometown anthropology. The main problem is how to get rid of the limits of native culture, while recapturing my own culture from a higher level. The only way is to see different cultures so as to train sharper eyes. So one can find something that he may take for granted when living in his own culture. In order to transcend his culture, one has to read a lot and do fieldwork for a long time.I stayed in that village for about a month during the summer holiday of 2004, participated in the activities of the villagers, talked with them about their experiences and impressions during the Mid-July days, and read about annals of local history, such as their family trees, the local chronicles, etc.In this article I have described their activities during the Mid-July Days, such as the half-year harvest, worshiping their ancestors, charities to the ghosts, and the married women going back to their natal families. All the activities have a common theme: transition and transformation of peoples' lives.With the coming of the Mid-July Days, the soil has ended a cycle of growth, and started a new one. People communicate with their ancestors positively, in order to bring productive forces to their lands. They also give food, money and clothes to the ghosts, so as to transform the dangerous elements to the safe ones. The married women go back to their born families so they can have time to rest. As "intimate outsiders" of their natal families, they also can adjust the family relations. They andtheir brothers break from every one's small families and unite into a big family temporarily. During the festival, they confirm their identity as a community. To them the meaning of the festival is like a net similar to the cowpea trellis made of bamboo poles and vines. All the vines from the same root are like siblings from the same family. Under particular circumstances, they can unite as a common family. Just like people use bamboo poles to unite the vines, making a fixed structure.People are suspended in the net woven by them. So they control the net of meanings. They can change the meanings of the festival in different contexts, adding new meanings to the old forms. The Mid-July Days thus present different aspects.