Spring Festivals And Female Identity Awareness

This paper is a case study which focuses on the female identity embodied by Spring Festival custom in the mountain area of Yimeng located in the central and south of Shandong Province. The main purpose is beyond the confines of this case and provides a reference for the improvement of rural women's status and the harmonious development of rural life.This paper includes introduction, body part (which is divided into four chapters) and conclusion.Introduction describes the significance of the topic, cards the relevant research trends, explains the research methods and the data sources, and give the framework of the paper.Chapter One explains the location, natural environment, historical and cultural background, and the livelihood manner of the Yuqian village, a typical rural agricultural village community in North China. And this study illustrates the status of Spring Festival in the local folk life, the festival system, and the People's consciousness of identity.Chapter Two discusses the female identity issues in household sacrifices.This part will discuss in the following several aspects:Firstly, it involves the relationship between marriage and the qualification for attending household sacrifices, referring to the female identity conversion from the girl to newlywed daughter-in-law and the female identity in the Spring Festival. Secondly, it explores the importance of Children in establishing position. Thirdly, it explores the absence of identity of the non-marriage woman.Chapter Three takes the folk beliefs activities during the Spring Festival as the breakthrough point, shows the participation and role of women in the folk beliefs activities and discusses the women's family status embodied in the belief activities. This part refers to several issues as follows:the female identity of the host in the worship of Household God (the Stove God, the God of Wealth); the female as the main participants in worship of Village God (Guan Gong, the Land of God);the degree of women's participation and their roles in their family status; the faith and reverence to the Goddess of Mount Tai; the special role of woman in the family and village life established by civil Faerie belief which alleviating the feminine anxious of innermost feelings. Finally, it discusses the effect of folk beliefs in the process of establishing family position.Chapter Four mainly discusses the female relatives'communication during the Spring Festival. In this period, the female visits (unmarried woman) the father family or the relatives relevant to the husband's household (married woman) in order to enhance the close affinity and the clan identity. Newly married women take this opportunity to contact with the relatives relevant to the husband's household and complete the conversion of status. A married woman visits her own parents in the fourth or sixth day of the Spring Festival, which express the emotion. Relatives by affinity visit each other intends to establish contacts and expand the social relations. At last, it discusses that the female relatives' communication during the Spring Festival is not only the requirement for emotional expression, but also the need of constructing the networks of social relations.Conclusion evaluates the women's sense of identity in the Spring Festival. The women's practices during the Spring Festival reflect their survival situation in the social life. The female's status in the family is unstable and they must rely on marriage and childbearing to establish the position in a family. They are often placed in an embarrassed position. In some folk religion activities, their initiative is strengthened; In the process of constructing the network of social relations, their enthusiasm is encouraged. The female's status in the family is directly related to their survival situation and the stability and harmony of family.