Red Spring Festival in Yan'an Period

The Lunar New Year is the most grand festival of the Chinese nation, carrying people's unremitting pursuit and sincere expectations for a better life. During the Yan'an period, the Communist Party of China combined the political concept of building a new China with the ancient folk customs of Yan'an, forming a distinctive red Spring Festival culture, leaving many memorable red memories.

　　Combine the propaganda and education of new ideas with traditional folk customs

Yan'an is located in the hinterland of the Loess Plateau, with simple folk customs, and retains a variety of Spring Festival folk activities. In the process of welcoming the New Year, the local people endow these customs with strong regional characteristics, create a prosperous and lively festive atmosphere, and piously pin their hopes on unknown gods. After the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China entered Yan'an, it respected the forms of folklore, but reformed its content, with the purpose of improving the people's cultural cognition and political consciousness, using the old forms to promote new ideas, and opening up a new way of taking the revolutionary road to seek a happy life. idea.

New Year pictures and Spring Festival couplets are the most intuitive carriers for people to express their good wishes. The traditional old New Year paintings take the immortal and fierce generals in folklore or historical stories as the main characters, and the door gods are Zhong Kui, Qin Qiong and Wei Chigong. At the beginning of 1938, Lu Yi's artists created woodcut New Year pictures "Grain Harvest" and "Defending Hometown" and posted them to farmers. They started the creation of New Year pictures and gradually expanded them. In 1942, the Lu Yi Fine Arts Department established a New Year painting research group to continuously improve the creation of New Year paintings, and use folk forms in technology to suit the appreciation habits of the local people; the content is to praise the party's line, principles and policies as the main content, fully demonstrating the army and people in the border area. The new life and new style of life are deeply loved by the masses.

The couplet of the Spring Festival, from the selection of content to the time of posting, has special requirements in the traditional Yan'an folk customs. Compared with the New Year pictures, it has a deeper meaning and pays attention to individuality, can better convey the concerns of the people, and has more publicity and education value. Under the active promotion of the Border Region Government, the people of Yan'an spontaneously created many New Spring Festival couplets based on the Anti-Japanese War and real life. For example: freedom and equality except the old year; Democratic politics celebrate the New Year. Persist in the war of resistance to the end after the new year; Oppose compromise and surrender except the old year. There are cattle, land, labor, and every family has enough food; self-planting, self-spinning, and self-weaving. These Spring Festival couplets are all over the border area, exuding a strong festive atmosphere, outlining the self-confidence and passion of the people of Yan'an, and effectively playing an educational role in literacy textbooks and political textbooks.

Combining the development direction of revolutionary literature and art with folk art forms

There are many ancient folk art forms in northern Shaanxi, such as fighting fire, yangko, storytelling, singing wine and music, etc., which are widely used in celebrating festivals or weddings and funerals. Among them, the mass foundation of Yangko is the most profound, which integrates dance, singing and role playing. The content is completely derived from the life of farmers. It is a very important part of Yan'an traditional Spring Festival culture, which often lasts from the first day of the new year to the Lantern Festival. During the Yan'an period, Yangko was injected with new vitality and became a beautiful scenery in the red Spring Festival culture of Yan'an.

After Mao Zedong's "Speech at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art" was published, the Yan'an literary and art circles set off a new upsurge of the popularization of literature and art, and a "New Yangko Movement" came into being. Under the guidance of the direction of literature and art serving the people, a large number of literary and art workers went to the grassroots level to learn and adopt the traditional art form of Northern Shaanxi Yangko and transform it. With the actual life of the army and the people in the border area as the theme, they created "supporting the army flower drum", "brother and sister opening up wasteland" and "shaking the basket of flowers" and other new Yangko songs, which appeared on the streets of Yan'an during the Spring Festival in 1943. Lu Yi formed a huge 150-member Yangko team to perform during the Spring Festival in Yangjialing, the Central Party School, and the Cultural Gou; in order to cooperate with the "double support Movement," people from all walks of life in Yan'an held military and civilian parties, supported the government and loved the people, and Yan'an literary and art circles held labor condolence meetings in Jinpen Bay and Nanniwan. In a performance in Luojiaping, Dongxiang, Yan'an, when the actors playing flower drums sang: "pigs, sheep, where to send them", tens of millions of people watching around sang in unison: "to the heroic eighth Route Army." The scene was warm and moving.

The combination of the leader's love for the people and the people's sincere support for the party

New Year's greetings are an ancient custom of the Chinese nation, which best highlights the happy and beautiful atmosphere when we bid farewell to the old and welcome the new. During the Yan'an period, the most memorable New Year's greetings occurred between the party leaders and their peasant friends. During their stay in Yan'an, the central leaders got along very well with their neighbors no matter where they lived. During the Spring Festival, they always paid New Year greetings to each other and watched Yangko to celebrate the Spring Festival. During the Spring Festival in 1943, Mao Zedong learned that there were 24 elderly people over 60 in Zaoyuan Village, and two of them were birthdays on the 15th of the first lunar month, so he decided to invite 24 elderly people to dinner on the Lantern Festival to celebrate their birthdays. At two o'clock in the afternoon that day, Mao Zedong personally greeted everyone at the door and toasted them one by one, wishing the old people a long life. After that, he invited everyone to watch the movie "Lenin in October". The atmosphere was joyful and close to the family.

February 11, 2018 Source: China Organization and Personnel News