“Qi”: A Study On Local People’s Daily Practice And Ritual

On the basis of my field-work, this paper can be considered a morecomplete sense of ethnography. Shawo Town, which is subordinate toDongming County，its location and local myths、legends provide importantclues to understand the unique to the region of the Yellow River extensive area.Based on the local people’s daily practice and religious beliefs of the dominantsymbol "Qi",which are bounded in the space,in the conclusion part of thispaper,we can form a concept of the wholeness of Qi. In local society, it hasthree levels of structural characteristics and different significance.First of all, itis a material entity which exists in people’s living world, Qi of Heaven, Qi ofEarth and Qi of Human, three different forms of its existence. Secondly, in thesense of material premise, Qi has individual cultural significance and collectiveaction social significance, QiXing, luck and QiShu,and so on, can conciselyexpress this meaning. Thirdly,"Qi" has the most important symbolic meaning,its special form of Shen and ancestors bearing local society’s basicorganization form which is clan to clan, traditional construction of local identityand local political power, but also the performance of the fairness, justice andthe good and evil. For the local people’s universe view construction,theconcept of Qi also provides a crucial factor. All the understanding of localpeople about Qi, can be said the wholeness of Qi.To support the concept of the whoness of Qi, this thesis develops followinglevel-two explanatory concepts，such as: the local universal outlook of Qi, thematerial properties of Qi, the individual culture and social significance, and thespecial forms of Qi like Ling and the ancestor, and their related beliefs inmeaning.The study of local universe outlook concept have3identifiedcategories,one is the souls’ travel after people’s death, one is about the knowledge of local space, the last one is about the feeling of time. The breathof Qi is the crucial characteristics of living. Once the Qi is broken, one iskilled,but the cutting of Qi is not the dispersion of it, it changes to besouls.The human souls has three kinds of types which is the commonsence ofthe local people. They are the soul which inhabits around the tomb, the soulcan tranfer to other kinds of living speices, the soul can become to be thecitizen of the Yin-world. The3-kinds of special souls deals with the living worldin different ways. People on the local spatial cognition is a local centerrecognition. In Shawo Temple, Bixia Yuanjun main God belief constructs thekonwledge of "Beijing city",which let the local people be in the center of theuniverse in the model of consciousness.Twenty-four solar term is the localfarming community sense of time, according to the people of day when Qichanges with operating arrangement corresponding to the farmingactivities.Twenty-four solar term only in societies where time identification in a,it must combine with the lunar and the zodiac composition and local people,circulating time concept of composite."Qi" in daily practice and language shows its physical properties, i.e. it isthe presence of a substance. Qi of Heaven, Qi of Earth and Qi of Human,areon this matter and its properties of basic knowledge. Taking this as the premise,people set up to the individual culture of it and society action understanding.QiXing, gambling for Qi,luck and bad luck and other expression is the meaningof individual Qi; Qushu and Qichang, are concepts such as social action andcollective representation level.In the folk religion area,the existence of "Qi" generated two variants. It isable to gather together and become Shen, and it can be ancestors afterpeople’s death. This paper examines the festival rituals and beliefs, worship ofthe threshold, people and the gods, ancestors, and even the worldcommunitas mode, process and significance.By the gods for the people,thereby giving birth to son and grandchildren, make oneself incense tocontinue, not only people’s own social reproduction problem, and also theplace on the ancestor worship and connected into a set of Confucian filial pietyof the social system, and identifies the rural social basic organization principle--family, and for the family is still the same and integration provide symbolic religious symbols. On the first day of lunar calendar March, Shawo temple fairtraditional revival and the people to actively participate in the action of thetemple, that local people on local history and local construction and identity ingradually hasten is consistent.God’s divine judgment and the individualthrough the etiquette in the load of moral and fairness, justice concept, to thelocal people’s normal life provides institutional assurance.In addition, the spiritworld of understanding and imagination is full of local political power ofmetaphor.In short, the view of the wholeness of Qi can better reflect the local peoplein the practice of daily life and religious belief,and connected into a meaningand physiognomy.