ABSTRACT
Zhanghu Village, located in the Gukeng Mountain area, preserves the Thanksgiving Ceremony, which has been inherited from ancestors for more than a hundred years. Since the pilgrimage project in the festival cannot be completed in one day in the mountainous area, it is divided into two settlements every year to carry out the ceremonies at staggered times. However, in the inheritance of the festival, due to the migration and aging of the population in mountainous areas, the manpower for the festival is becoming increasingly insufficient. In addition, the residents mainly rely on agriculture for their livelihood, and their income is affected by the weather and is not sufficient. The details and the scale of sacrifices may be flexibly adjusted according to the current situation by the Censer Keeper who was in charge of the festival. This research took two years to collect data through in-depth interviews with local residents and participating observations, and compared and analyzed four times Thanksgiving ceremonies. It was found that there were “principles” and “elasticity” in the implementation of Thanksgiving ceremonies. The principal part is to preserve each item of the ceremony according to the routine, which is enough to preserve the appearance of the ceremony. The flexible part is mostly about the details of the execution of the ceremony, which is greatly influenced by the attitude and ideas of the Censer Keeper. This study found that there are many meanings in the details of the Thanksgiving ceremony in Zhanghu Village, but in the process of inheritance, the residents only knew the superficial practices but did not know the meaning behind them, so they were not taken seriously and easily became the object of elastic simplification.
