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Sample Tours of Folk Culture |
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Hundreds of Travel
Agencies have sponsored countless folk culture tours. Again only a
few sample tours can be given Here.
The "Home of One Hundred Festivals" is a best attraction.
In addition to the festivals, a number of folk culture museums have
been set up. One is an open air museum , the largest and earliest
of its kind in China.
A tour to the exotic matriarchal Mosuos , a band of the Naxi people,
is always an enchanting experience. It is on a lake between the provinces
of Sichuan and Yunnan. This band sticks to a matrilocal and matrilineal
culture in spite of the repeated pressure and interference from outside.
Here a woman may have more than one visiting husband. The children
only know their mothers and stay with their mothers.
A tour of Genghis Khan's Mausoleum at the Mongolian Nadamu Festival
must be a mixed experience of contemporary life and the distant "scourge
of God."
A night trip to the Hanshan (Cold Mountain) Temple in Suzhou makes
nostalgic Chinese and Japanese alike. In their childhood they have
all read a poem about the temple. For hundred of years it has been
a tradition for visitors to hear or strike the bell of the temple.
A tour of the temples of Mazu the goddess of sea navigation and fishermen
is a favorite with compatriots and Chinese descendants abroad. Her
temples are found everywhere along China's southeast sea coast.
A hunting trip for wild ginseng in Jilin Province must be fascinating
to both foreigners and Chinese. Rituals are held before the trip.
No one is allowed to speak in the mountains for fear that the "ginseng
boy" might be scared and go down deep into the ground. When ginseng
is found, a red tape must be tied around its waist, otherwise the
ginseng boy will somehow manage to escape.
"A Day of a Shanghai Resident" enables a foreign visitor
to actually live through the daily routine of a Shanghai family. It
can be most rewarding and extraordinary, for it really makes him penetrate
into the family of the "inscrutable" Chinese. |
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