Dragon King Belief And Sea Sacrificial Ceremony In Rongcheng City Of Shandong Province

At the southern tip of Renhe town in Rongcheng city of Shandong province there is a small fishing village named Yuankuang, which is surrounded on three sides by mountain while the other one side is facing the ocean. Although great mountains block up the village and the inland, the sea has opened a door for it, a door, which is lead to a wider world. People living in this small village make a live by fishing for centuries. With the progress of fishing techniques the life condition of all fishermen in this village has been proud of the changes. The unexpected risk at sea and the loneliness and dolefulness of the deep-sea fishing, however, is the only thing, which have not changed. Consequently, the awe of the ocean have arouse from the inner world of all fishermen and then the Dragon King belief arouse and handed down from age to age. This kind of worship is throughout the fishermen’s daily life and then is reflected by various taboos as well as customs. Moreover, the Guyu Sea Sacrificial Ceremony, a kind of ritual, which is celebrated in the Chinese traditional agriculture festival called Grain Rain, highlights such kind of belief. All activists in that ceremony imply Fishermen’s desire for peace and rich.It is the awe of the ocean and the pursuit for safeness and prosperous that gave rise to the Dragon King belief and made this belief inherit in generations steady. Meanwhile, such kind of belief changed constantly in order to adapt to the development of society. There is no doubt that the fundamental factor that maintain the existence of the Dragon King belief is that all fishermen believe the Dragon King have the function of protect the people fishing on the ocean. Thus it can be seen that there is a closely relationship between the function and the origin of the folk belief including the Dragon King belief. This relationship is not only embodied in the Guyu Sea Sacrificial Ceremony, but throughout the fishermen’s daily life as well. Consequently, the study of the occurrence theory and functionalist of folk belief need to combine with specific cases, so that we can do a targeted analysis on the basis of the specific contexts and events. It can also help us to reveal the rule of the creation, inheritance, and transition of the folk belief.In this thesis, which is based on a case study of a specific folk belief about the Dragon King belief, there are six parts. The main purpose of this study is discussing and analyzing that folk belief under a special viewpoint of the occurrence theory and functionalist. In the first part of this paper I will introduce the object of my study briefly, present the general situation of the correlational research, and lead to the topic of this thesis.In the second part I will explain the context of the Dragon King belief and its special ritual, Guyu Sea Sacrificial Ceremony, according describe the natural environment, the fishing life of men, and daily life of women in Yuankuang Village. In the third part I want to interpret the relationship between the Dragon King belief and Guyu Sea Sacrificial Ceremony through depict the belief system in Yuankuang village. Then the next two part is the detailed description of the Guyu Sea Sacrificial Ceremony and the inner world of all villagers participating in this ceremony:the forth part is about preparation of the ritual, and the fifth part is regard to the ceremony itself. The last part is in order to summarize the full text and then lead to the purport of this thesis, which is consider that it is the pursue of safe and rich of the fisherman that give rise to the Dragon King belief. Moreover such kind of folk belief changed with the development of the economy and society.