Folklore, Connotations In The World Of Life Of Men Operating Rafts In Hehuang Valley

The raft, as a kind of tranditional tool of traffic and transport, was invented by the people living in the specific environment along the yellow river in gansu, qinghai, and ningxia, to meet the needs of people there. Fa zi ke, the men who regard operating rafes as a style of living, have being played an important role in the system of society, especially in people's economic life in the old days.In this paper, the author has described the life of various costoms, including the material one, the spiritual one, the oral language one, the orgnized rules etc, connected with the men operating rafts detailedly. Though the specific description, the author has revealed the folk values and connotations in the life world of this group, ie, the living consciousness, the life rules, the national spirits, psychology, and characters etc. Therefore, from the point of view of water transportation, this paper has shown the factual conditions ahout the north-western people' s life in the old days and then bestowed the travel of shin rafts on aboundant historical and cultural connatations. Meanwhile, the paper has drawn conclusions about the changes of water transportation costoms in the north-western areas of China and tried to express the applied values of themselves and the theoretical means of this study.