Research On The Local Maritime Faith Of One Fishermen Village By The Yellow Sea

Local maritime faith is the generalization of Sea Gods worship and sacrifice, ocean worship and sacrifice, plus the folklore made during fishery production and marine life biased on this unique local maritime faith, which created and inherited by people living on the ocean. Local maritime faith of fishermen village by the Yellow Sea has great appeal and influence on individuals’ daily life, restricting ordinary people’s behaviors, thus regional folklore comes into being. This article chooses Peijia Village as the location of fieldwork, carding the domestic and foreign academic materials, using the in-depth interviews and participant observation method to do the field survey, investigating the real life of fishermen, the whole process of preparation and specific ceremony, obtaining a large number of first-hand audio and video data. Based on all the investigating information, the author analyzes the influence upon ordinary individuals the local maritime faith has, and through horizontal and vertical comparison with other fishermen villages by the Yellow Sea, analyzes how the local maritime faith to inherent and develop during the period of social transformation.This paper includes six chapters. Chapter one is the introduction, clarifying the sources of the topic, status of research, research method, purposes and significances. Chapter two is the brief introduction of Peijia Village, including the geographical position, status of fishermen and fishery, kinship, folk life and the temple of dragon king, providing an overview of survival foundation and living space of local maritime faith. Chapter three elaborates the folklore of fishery production and marine life, especially the tattoo customs in the nature of unique maritime characteristics, in order to ascertain the initial appearance of local maritime faith. Chapter four expatiates on the Sea Gods worship and its sacrifice ceremony, revealing the phenomenon of the dragon king worship mainly, combing with Matsu, Kwan-yin and halobios worship and their separated sacrifice ceremony from emic and etic perspective, and then analyses its function, character and culture meaning. Chapter five shows the ocean worship and its sacrifice ceremony, expounding the preparatory process and the sacrifice offering ceremony, revealing the symbolic meaning of the ceremony.Chapter six is the analysis and conclusion part of this paper, combining the tradition with the current condition of Fishermen’ Festival, which serves as the centralizes exhibition of local maritime faith, making horizontal comparison with other fishermen villages by the Yellow Sea to analyze the necessity and inevitability of the intervention of the government and the moderate intervention of commercial activities to avoid the circumstance of pure pursuit of economic interests, and vertical comparison with the host status of each period since the early 20th century to illuminate the situation that with the glooming of folklore tour and folk culture industry, the decline tendency of traditional maritime faith cannot be avoidable and ignored, thus discuss the recipe of the inherence and growth of local maritime faith during the period of social transformation, which demands us to provide a loose social environment and give it appropriate respect, under the premise of time and space being guaranteed, plus the main beliers should also exert their subjective initiative to participate in the development and inheritance of folk belief and avoid to be the vassal of government sponsored activities, as well as paying attention to the preservation of the original ecological folk custom with the development of folk tourism and folklore industry.