Culture and Folk Customs
Taoyuan has its unique folk custom characteristics since it is located in the transition zone between Han nationality and ethnics.
In diet, Lei Cha, a "five flavors soup" by smashing a mixture of tea leaves, ginger, cornel, green beans and salt into powder, is popular drink in Taohuanyuan area. According to legend, Lei Cha prevented the soldiers from pestilence caused by the soldiers being unable to acclimatize to the environment in Taoyuan during the time Eastern Han general Ma Yuan fought southward to Taoyuan.
Taoyuan has unique local operas. Wuling Opera is a popular local opera performed by professionals. Musty Notes received the National Artist Award for its performance and script writing. Nuo Opera drama, called a "living fossil", is still widespread. Sangyanggang Town is known as the hometown of Nuo Opera.
Other folk customs include dragon dance and lion dance during Spring Festival. Meanwhile, the Three Bar Drum, Yugu Drum, and string instruments are very popular as well.
Read more about this topic: Taoyuan County, Hunan
Famous quotes containing the words culture, folk and/or customs:
“Why is it so difficult to see the lesbian—even when she is there, quite plainly, in front of us? In part because she has been “ghosted”Mor made to seem invisible—by culture itself.... Once the lesbian has been defined as ghostly—the better to drain her of any sensual or moral authority—she can then be exorcised.”
—Terry Castle, U.S. lesbian author. The Apparitional Lesbian, ch. 1 (1993)
“In the past, the English tried to impose a system wherever they went. They destroyed the nation’s culture and one of the by- products of their systemisation was that they destroyed their own folk culture.”
—Martin Carthy (b. 1941)
“We set up a certain aim, and put ourselves of our own will into the power of a certain current. Once having done that, we find ourselves committed to usages and customs which we had not before fully known, but from which we cannot depart without giving up the end which we have chosen. But we have no right, therefore, to claim that we are under the yoke of necessity. We might as well say that the man whom we see struggling vainly in the current of Niagara could not have helped jumping in.”
—Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)