As a settlement of Tujia and Dong people, what are the special folk customs in Shennongjia?

The characteristic folk customs of Shennongjia include eating hot meals, playing funeral songs, entertaining guests with chopsticks alone and drinking cold wine.

First of all, it is important to eat hot meals. It is important to go to the home of the villagers in Shennongjia for dinner. When the local people give their guests a meal, they will only hold a small bowl. Before the guests have finished eating, the director will take away the guest's bowl, throw out the rest of the meal and serve hot meals again, even if the weather is very hot, to show their respect for the guests.

Playing funeral songs is a way for the villagers in Shennongjia to mourn the dead, which is also called jumping funeral drums. This ceremony is mainly for relatives and friends to remember the contributions and merits of the deceased before his death, wishing the deceased to go to the West and pray for future generations. It is a custom with traditional national culture and religious superstition. There are mainly relatives and friends in the local area who are holding funerals, and the neighbors will come to offer sacrifices, and then some people who can sing will be invited to play drums and sing all night, which is quite a farewell to the dead, and also makes the relatives of the deceased feel warm in this atmosphere, reducing the feeling of desolation and sadness.

Let's talk about treating guests with chopsticks alone, which means that when a guest comes to Shennongjia Mountain for the first time, the director must give him a bowl of sweet wine, glutinous rice, and then hand him only a chopstick. This bowl of glutinous rice sweet wine is called "meeting tea" locally, which also means expressing the host's hospitality.

finally, let's talk about drinking cold wine. When a guest visits Tujia in Shennongjia, the host will offer a glass of wine to the guest at the front, and then say, please drink tea. The guest must drink all the wine before the host can happily take out real hot tea to receive the guest. If the guests can't drink, they can explain their difficulties to the host first, and then they can just take a sip to show their respect. The custom of entertaining guests with wine instead of tea is called drinking cold wine locally.