Traditional Life in Xitang

The Lantern Festival is on the Fifteenth Day of the First Month of Lunar Calendar, at night, the strange things come. People living in the town will play lanterns of different shapes, and many romantic love stories will happen tonight. Meanwhile, the elderly people and young children pray for harvest and prosperity in the New Year.

Children ride their cattle in the field and look up at the azure sky. The oxen will roam freely, the children are chewing soft grasses and singing folk songs. In old times, adult used buffalos, which were the sole tool for doing farming work, while the oxen were taken care by children. Lovely songs could only be heard when children were playing with the animals.

The reading farmers. They were very happy at doing farming work and often enjoyed reading. The expansion of the old rural villages and some of the villagers had begun to do business, had made Xitang became a small but prospering town in eastern China. However, the commercial atmosphere did no negative impacts to the traditional and frugal lifestyles in Xitang. Locals still believed agriculture was the basic of all things and they thought if people did not read, they would not realize the true happiness during they did farming work. Reading also meant farmers would know how they would to be good men.

The smoke of burning incenses with sounds of prayer wreathes the ancient temple fair in Xitang. The statues of god sit stately in the temple hall and wait for a grand parade, which is the climax of the cheerful temple fair. The god statues placed in sedans and lifted by eight strong men each sedan. It is a race that people are to demonstrate their pomp and circumstances, and to expel the sinister air in the ancient water town. Before the race, men will drink a kind of rice liquor bottled and buried underground in the town for about a year. The wine is kept in very low temperature in winter. When the men drink it, they will not feel the power because of the coldness of the liquor, and during they are running it will stimulate their spirit so they will not feel tired even they have run so long.

Xitang pastoral song singing competition has a hundred years of history. Xitang songs are all about love story and ancient anecdotes. Old and respected men in Xitang judged the singers and the one with excellent technique and moving voice will be the winner.

The Stove God. Chinese attach important to food and kitchen, and they need a god to protect the stoves and utensils. The Stove Offering Day is on the Twenty-fourth Day in the Twelfth Month of Lunar Calendar. In the past, the room that the stove placed was also a bathroom, people thought that they often naked in front of the stove god was quite disrespectful, so that on this day they made rice dumplings as offering for him. A colored paper with an image of the stove god wrapped a wood block, and the god could sit on it. At the end of every year, the god had to report to the Heaven about the work he had done. Local families offered sacrifices to him and hope that he would bless them again in the New Year.

The Temple of the Earth was essential for Xitang people, who worshiped the soil to which their agricultural harvest depended on.

In old China girls who grown up had to be married, but women at that time had no equal rights as men. They had to completely obey their husbands. Women love their home and their parents very much and quite reluctant to leave during the wedding day. They usually cried sadly in front of fathers and mothers. In addition to the true sadness in their souls, it was also the custom in Xitang that they demonstrated their filial piety to their parents. In old water towns in China, no sedan was needed during wedding. A boat taking the bridegroom to the bride's house, and then she would be onboard it and she was the man's wife forever.

Women in Xitang had to learn embroidery when they were very small. They dedicated their whole life to make clothes and kerchiefs. In their old ages, their eyes would be weary and their hairs were white.