| Mianhua (Flour Flower) |
 |
Mianhua is art created with flour. Fermented flour is kneaded into
various shapes such as animals, gourds, fruits and flowers, and
then steamed and finally coloured.
In Mizhi County of Shaanxi Province, I was fascinated as an old
woman kneaded the flour. She cut a small piece of dough and rubbed
it several times. First she made a body of a bird. Then she rubbed
a small piece of dough into short noodles, pressed them flat,
pasted them on the back of the bird and made the wing of the bird
with a comb. Finally she made the beak. She had kneaded a singing
skylark.
It was even more interesting to see her knead a monkey. She kneaded
the flour into a monkey with a hat very quickly. Finally, she
put two black pieces of millet on the head of the monkey for the
eyes. I calculated the time she took to make the dough sculptures:
four minutes for the skylark and six minutes for the monkey.
When asked the origin of mianhua, she did not know. She said
that it was handed down from generation to generation. Research
says mianhua was related to the customs of funeral and sacrificial
rites. Three thousand years ago in the Shang Dynasty, slaves were
buried alive with their dead masters. Wooden and pottery figurines
were buried with the dead masters instead. Nowadays, when paying
respects during the festival for the dead, the Qingming Festival,
people in northern Shaanxi Province still keep the ancient customs
of watering the graveyard and offering mianhua as sacrifices to
ancestors.
Today mianhua is used as a gift. In the home of a person who
just got married, we saw mianhua which were sent by his relatives
as a congratulatory gift, each weighing two kilogrammes. The mianhua
with a picture of dragons and phoenixes was called long feng cheng
xiang (dragons and phoenixes show prosperity.). The mianhua in
the shape of a chain of locks expresses the hope that the newly
married couple will live to an old age happily. Eighteen pairs
of mianhua sent by eighteen relatives were arranged together just
like an art display of mianhua.
According to a local custom, when returning to her parents' home,
a married woman must bring half a basket of mianhua with her.
The ring-shaped mianhua presented to her parents and other elders
expresses the wish that the elders should have a long life as
the ring goes round without the end. The mianhua are decorated
with a bat and a sika deer as a symbol for the hope that the couple
can spend their remaining years in happiness because the word
for bat and happiness are homophonic in China. The word for sika
deer and payment is also homophonic.
Mianhua shaped like a rabbit and tiger are given to children,
to show the wish that a boy should be as strong as tiger and a
girl as lovely and clever as a white rabbit. Mianhua in the shape
of birds is used to show that children will be good at singing
and dancing like birds.
|
