dough figurine

dough figurine

Noodles, also known as face sculptures, models and flowers, are simple but highly artistic Chinese folk crafts. As early as the Han Dynasty, Chinese face sculpture art has been written down. It uses flour and glutinous rice flour as the main raw materials, together with color, paraffin, honey and other ingredients, after anti-cracking and anti-mildew treatment, to make soft dough of various colors.

Kneading artists, according to the needs of random materials, several times in the hands of kneading, rubbing, kneading, lifting, with a small bamboo knife smart location, cutting, carving, sculpting, hand, head, put on hair and clothing, in an instant, lifelike artistic image will be freed from hand.

In 2008, it was selected as the second batch of national intangible cultural heritage list.

Historical origin

When did the kneader really start? But from the surface figurines and pigs unearthed from the Tang tomb in Astana, Turpan, Xinjiang, it can be inferred that it has been at least 1,340 years since then. In the Southern Song Dynasty, "Tokyo Menghualu" there is also a record of dough-shakers: "Made of oil-noodles and molasses like laughing pans." At that time, noodles were edible, which was called "fruit food". There is also a legend among kneaders in China. It is said that Kongming of the Three Kingdoms expelled Nanman. When crossing the Lujiang River, there was a strong wind. The wise Kongming then worshipped Jiangshen with the appearance of human head and animal sacrifice made of fabric. Strangely enough, the army crossed the river safely and smoothly calmed down Nanman. Henceforth, all practitioners worshiped Kong Ming as their ancestor.

Artistic characteristics

The characteristics of facial sculpture art:

1. Rich colors;

2. Small size and easy to carry.

3. The material is cheap and the production cost is relatively low.

After a long period of exploration, the face sculpture works are not mouldy, cracked, deformed and fadeless. Therefore, they are loved by tourists and are souvenirs for relatives and friends. When visiting the production of the visitors, foreign tourists are overwhelmed by the artists'skillful skills and lifelike characters. They praise each other and call the face sculpture of morality and ambition "the sculpture of China".

The characteristics of facial sculpture art are "one seal, two pinches, three inlays and four rolls" (steps of clay sculpture), as well as "Wen's chest, Wu's belly, the back of the old man, the waist of the beautiful woman". Face sculpture is small, easy to carry, durable, mildew-proof, non-splitting, non-deforming and non-fading, so it is loved by tourists and a souvenir for relatives and friends. When visiting the production of the visitors, foreign tourists are overwhelmed by the artists'skillful skills and lifelike characters. They praise each other and call Beijing's face sculpture "Chinese sculpture".

Inheritance significance

Although the way of making noodles is relatively simple, it is a folk handicraft with high artistry.

In the old society, facial sculpture artists "only make a living, go around in tears", carry boxes, go to villages and towns, do in the streets, become instantaneous, popular with the masses, but their works are regarded as a gadget, and can not be boarded in the hall of elegance.

Face sculpture art as a precious intangible cultural heritage has been valued, and gadgets have entered the palace of art. Kneading artists, according to the needs of random materials, several times in the hands of kneading, rubbing, kneading, lifting, with a small bamboo knife smart location, cutting, carving, sculpting, hand, head, put on hair and clothing, in an instant, lifelike artistic image will be freed from hand. Graceful, elegant dress beautiful women, naive children, as well as a variety of myths, dramas, historical figures delicate glass frames, become people's favorite traditional arts and crafts .

Custom

Customs of Qingming Dynasty and Cold Food

The combination of Qingming Dynasty and cold food was a matter of Tang Dynasty. At that time, as a symbol of ancient age, the custom festival had added the complex content of worshipping gods, ancestors and sages. Therefore, the wind of tomb sweeping was especially flourishing. If sacrificing gods is the characteristic of Spring Festival custom, then the Qingming Dynasty is mainly sacrificing ancestors and sacrificing people. Confucius said, "Life is a rite for everything; Death is a rite for burial, and sacrifice is a rite." Therefore, we pay great attention to "everything dies as it happens". The ancestral temple and the ancestral grave are the soul of nature and the root of the family. In Shanxi Province, when offering sacrifices to people in the South and north of Jin Dynasty, they all use noodles as tribute. In the south of Jin Dynasty, snakes are called snake dishes. Some of them are divided into single-headed snakes and double-headed snakes. They go around the grave before offering sacrifices to their ancestors. The younger generation eats snake heads to show that they are poisonous This kind of snake dish is concise in shape and seldom carved, which seems to have a concise, lively and dull legacy of the Han and Tang Dynasties. The essential content of Shanxi Cold Food Festival has changed from the primitive fire ban custom in ancient times to the commemoration of Jie Zitui, a virtuous Minister of Jin Dynasty. Various kinds of cold swallow noodles, widely produced by Chinese folk, are also renamed Zituiyan. In fact, according to Shanxi's natural geographical location and climatic characteristics, spring swallow flying into the sky is a new season for all creatures, so the rural smart woman's feeling changes naturally. With soft dough and dexterous hands, they create a fresh and flexible thing, a piece of vitality, and show a wonderful and magical folk art world. Especially in the Daixian area of Shanxi Province, the cold swallow flying in the sky, aquatic native growth, what you see in your eyes and what you think in your heart, all natural things are in the shaping. These dough sculptures are exquisite and unique, but they are not full of inches. Animals such as tigers, lions, horses, cows, cats, dragons, monkeys, sheep and so on, emphasize on exaggerating the proportion of the head, enhancing the tail movement, portraying the flexibility of limbs, making people feel like gods and beautiful shapes. Birds, such as chickens, ducks, peacocks, phoenixes, magpies and various birds, exaggerate the motility of their tail feathers, exaggerate their mouths and eyes, making them anthropomorphic and emotionally resonant with the viewers. The sculpted figures are larger than those of animals and plants. There are various dramatic characters, such as climbing dolls, holding chicken dolls, lotus dolls, etc. The sculpts are elegant and vivid. Plants have a variety of fruits, vegetables, flowers and auspicious patterns. After steaming, the face is dyed with color dots, and the colors are bright and contrastive. The ratio relation of contrast colors is reasonably applied to produce a strong artistic effect. In the Qing and Ming Dynasties, they give each other gifts, make flower racks, hang on the indoor walls, feel the spring breeze on their faces, and are full of vitality. The reason may be that these colorful foods are prepared for the cold food festival when the fire is banned, and then the fire custom is abandoned. As an art, the dough plastic food has been preserved along with the customs. Qingming Festival is a festival of hope, a blessing for the return of spring and a wish for the prosperity of all things, although it has been mingled with some deep and mysterious atmosphere due to the combination of cold food customs. The art of dough sculpture has naturally become the main means of this blessing and the world of spiritual expression. Flour sculpture makes custom a rich culture, which provides soil and air for the occurrence and development of flour sculpture, and ultimately makes folk art and custom a cultural whole.

July 15th and Delivery Sheep

The formation of each folk festival has its specific meaning, which has its cultural orientation and expression. On July 15, families make flour sheep, go to graves to sacrifice ancestors and give gifts to relatives and friends, which is a major feature of Shanxi folk customs. According to the traditional custom, July 15 is called "Ghost Festival", which originates from the Buddhist legend of "Mulian Save Mother": Mulian, a disciple of Buddha Sakyamuni, did not do good deeds before he died, and after his death, his soul fell into the ghost path of hunger. The food entrance became a fiery fire, and his suffering was endured. Mulian asked for Buddha. Buddha told him to hold a pelvic meeting on July 15, and put five hundred fruits in it, depending on the goodness of Buddhist monks to pass away. Soul, save its mother. This theory is also integrated with the doctrine of "forgiveness of sins by local officials" in Chinese Taoism, which deeply affects the people's lives, thus forming the custom of steaming flour sheep to pay tribute to ancestors'graves on July 15 every year. In fact, the original intention of offering sacrifices to ancestors on the 15th of July is just like what Tokyo Menghualu said. It is a wish for a good harvest. The religious Ghost Festival has developed to a time when no ghost has been seen. It is a festival of people's blessing and emotional blending. A few days before the festival, three or five smart women in the countryside gathered together to make fine white noodles. In the parents'short talk and laughter, they twisted, cut and pressed, picked one by one, counted the dates and beans, and each living thing jumped out of their hands: the rabbit, the tiger, the sheep, the fish, the lion, the piglet, the chicken and the puppy. Wisdom is devoted to love. When the steaming pot is ready, one by one, white and fat, fresh and flexible, delicate and can be pulled out, and then point to Shi Danqing, dressed neatly, it becomes the best gift for relatives and friends. The custom in northern Shanxi sends boys as sheep and sheep as auspicious objects. Girls are sent to fish, which belongs to Yin and is in accordance with the order of Yin and Yang. The flour sheep in the north of Shanxi Province is full and full in shape with strong connotation, and the contrast of points and lines makes it extremely rich in the style of Han and Wei Dynasty, which is related to the local historical culture and geographical environment. The beasts and animals in southern Shanxi are exquisite in shape, fierce in appearance and strong in color. The so-called flour sheep is in essence a proxy, birds and animals in fact have everything, as well as the combination of the twelve zodiac, two opera peaches, five competing for bamboo, and so on. Dingxiang's "flour sheep" is more famous both at home and abroad for its plump and beautiful, vigorous and broad modelling strength. The shape of the white flour is as large as three or five jin, and as small as three or five inches, depending on the object of the gift. In the styling style, we accurately grasp the characteristics of casualness. In a concise overall shape, combs, cones and other utensils are used to press out points, lines or surfaces to make exquisite decorations, forming a strong contrast in strength, which is very similar to the application of carving lines on Hanhuo debilitating stone carvings. The production technique grasps the good sense of proportionality, makes the shape but not insufficient, leaves the natural hair and steam for the face to complete the work, in order to give full play to the characteristics of the face, reflecting the texture of the face, natural, simple and honest, and lovely. Especially a kind of shape called "indecipherable". Several little fat dolls wrapped themselves around each other and played with each other. You can't tell who's arm and whose leg is. You can only see a group of beautiful shapes, excellent ideas and amazing people.

Etiquette and custom

Face sculpture plays an important role in seasonal customs at the age of 12. Face sculpture plays an irreplaceable role in various rituals of life to show the meaning of life. Full Moon is the first ceremonial ceremony for people to come to the world, and facial sculpture is also quite exquisite at that time. Huoxian area, grandma to make a straight ruler of the food called "Fengxuan", there are twelve subtle generic shape, what the child belongs to, on that generic point a red dot, known as "nodding the brain". A delicate dragon, Phoenix or tiger head placed in the middle of the "fence" is called "dragon, phoenix, Chengxiang" or "tiger" to exorcise evil spirits. Give it to the children, and give it to relatives and friends who come to visit and celebrate, so as to avoid disaster. Jinbei people make more steamed buns, called "peaches", shaped like breasts, nipples dotted red, steamed buns decorated with various flowers and plants, decorating auspicious patterns. Peach is originally a thing to exorcise evil spirits in ancient customs, which means to avoid disaster by saying "flee". Making breasts to express maturity is a metaphorical device of the maternity characteristics of rural folklore. At the age of one, children should also make similar big flower steamed buns or twelve generic facies. Their shapes are either clumsy or clever, or elegant or vulgar. The custom of weddings has always been a grand celebration of life. As the saying goes, "Marriage is better than Xiaodengke". It is a custom in northern Shanxi that the bride and groom each eat a pair of "happy fish and lucky rabbits" in the morning on the day of gathering. On the top of the door of the cave, a pair of face rabbits connected with red thread are placed to symbolize the golden margin of the jade rabbit. In fact, the original meaning of the rabbit is tiger, which is the God of protection and protection of the Chinese folk town house to exorcise evil spirits. Wedding dough sculpture must mention the "palace food" in Xinzhou, Dingxiang, Yuanping and Daixian. Generally, three or five kilograms of white dough are used as a pair. Most of the shapes are Yutu Xiantao and Goldfish Back Pomegranate. The twelve zodiac figures on the dough are elaborately ornamented, vivid, interesting, colorful, vivid and lively. The lines and faces, dots and blocks, sculptures and paintings, clumsy and ingenious combination and contrast, shape. It has a strong and moving artistic effect, strengthens the festive atmosphere, enriches the content of folk marriage customs, and adds a beautiful branch to folk art. Old people are always celebrating their birthday when they are old. Congratulations are made by steaming beautiful peaches to wish the old people a long and healthy life and express their filial piety to the old people. Religious doctrine tells us that when everyone rushes through the path of life that he can perceive, the human soul will be immortalized and sublimated in another world. Therefore, people arrange funeral procedures with extraordinary grandeur and complexity. This is a kind of praise and affirmation of the meaning of life. The main pasta offerings in this activity can be divided into "big offering" and "small offering" depending on the degree of intimacy. The big offering made by the children and grandchildren of the direct line is also called steamed bun. The round top is decorated with bright and concise petals and jujube flowers. It originates from the custom of sacrificing three animals in ancient times. Other relatives and friends worship small offerings similar to snake dishes. In Dingxiang Hongdao area, we need to create several sounds - a series of even hundreds of facial figures, dramatic characters, gods, magistrates and so on, and then decorate them with colored paper. What's different is that the five senses are painted in strange colors, and the eyes are not touched. There is an obvious difference in the aesthetic structure between the scale and the articles shared by human beings, which makes people feel a kind of cold and desolate in the lustre. Face sculpture in life etiquette generally appears as the face of food, but it gives it a cultural and religious meaning, so that it has a compound value, thus becoming a kind of information that can not be ignored in the study of traditional folk culture.

Flour sculptures are actually steamed buns, small figures made of glutinous rice flour and flour. Mainly appeared in marriage gifts, funeral offerings, but also used for birthday, gift of relatives and friends, prayer and memorial, etc. Farmers put all kinds of steamed flour sculptures in front of the gods, among which the pig head shape is commonly known as the "big offering". In addition, there are flower models, fruit models, ritual models, steamed toys and so on. The tools for making noodles steamed bun are very simple: white flour, scissors, kitchen knives, combs, dates, peppers and so on. As long as you master the hairdressing technology and knead according to the style, a vivid image of the noodles will stand out. Chinese traditional dietary culture has a long history. According to literature, the Han Dynasty has already recorded the dough sculpture. The Song Dynasty "Dream Liang Lu" recorded the use of dough sculpture in the Spring Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, Dragon Boat Festival and wedding celebrations. In Shaanxi and Hebei, dough sculptures are also called "face flowers" and "year models", and this ancient custom should be throughout the festival day. From the thirtieth to the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, there are happy scenes of giving gifts to each other everywhere in the countryside. Nearly everyone of the women in the eastern part of Guanzhong, Shaanxi Province, is a master in making ritual models, especially the elder women's skills.