Su Nuan and Gu Chengfeng were strolling around the temple fair, watching the fun. When they came across some delicious snacks, they stopped to buy some and ate while walking.
The two of them walked around for a while, and then the lion dance and land boat parade troupe that had gone to the Taoist temple to burn incense began to parade and perform along the street. Gu Chengfeng pulled Su Nuan to stand aside and watch the excitement with the crowd.
The most eye-catching performance in the parade is the land boat race. As the name suggests, the land boat is a boat sliding on dry land. It is a Han Chinese folk dance that simulates sailing on water. The land boat slides to the sound of gongs and drums. The land boat carries the festive color of the New Year and of course has cultural implications. In the rowing and running back and forth, it conveys the most simple hopes of the working people, praying for good weather, good harvests, everything goes well, and good luck.
The dry boat is decorated with red silk and paper flowers, mainly in the red color of Spring Festival couplets, with some green, purple and other colors. The colorful colors not only attract people's attention, but also have the traditional folk significance of attracting wealth and warding off evil spirits.
In the performance, the boatman (or "boatman") leads the way, while the passengers (or "boatmen") follow, sometimes walking slowly, sometimes pacing quickly, bobbing and swirling with the "waves," like a boat sailing on the water. This also symbolizes the circumstances of the new year or the ups and downs of life. Who can have a smooth and successful life? Slowing down when things are smooth and turning sharply when encountering dangerous shoals is a ritual of life and destiny, a wisdom inherited from working people throughout history.
The performance steps of the land boat are simple, but the forms are diverse. Without the land boat props themselves, it is actually a folk version of square dance. The land boat performance generally adopts "water sliding", "circling eight characters", "snake peeling" and other
The land boat team passed by, and behind them came performers on stilts wearing masks and exaggerated makeup. The stilts under their feet were more than one meter high, and they walked as steady as Mount Tai, without any swaying.
At this time, several stilt walkers first performed a piece of Peking Opera, waving their long sleeves on their arms. The sound was beautiful and vivid, as if they were standing on the stage. The stilts under their feet moved like the wind, which did not affect the stilt walkers at all. As soon as the sound was heard, everyone applauded.
Next up was the dragon and lion dance troupe, a traditional performance form that is almost impossible to see in the 21st century. It was truly a wonderful visual feast.
Su Nuan was enjoying the wonderful performance, and Gu Chengfeng stood beside her to protect her, fearing that the crowd would crowd Su Nuan. After the performance team passed by, people nowadays have very few entertainment activities, and it is rare to encounter lively activities. Most of them are still reluctant to leave. Many people followed the performance team to continue watching the performance. In this way, more and more people followed. Su Nuan wanted to walk around with everyone, but there were more and more people, and the crowd was getting more and more severe. Gu Chengfeng was worried about something going wrong, so he pulled Su Nuan and the two stood by the road, waiting for everyone to leave.
Looking at the crowd going away, Su Nuan followed Gu Chengfeng and planned to go home. They had visited almost all the places they needed to visit today and watched some wonderful performances. On the way back, Su Nuan and Gu Chengfeng bought a lot of food, planning to take it back and share it with their family.
The two of them were carrying a lot of things and walking and chatting towards the parking space. When they got near the parking space, Su Nuan was waiting on the side of the road. Gu Chengfeng carried the things to the car and then drove out.
Su Nuan was waiting bored by the roadside when she saw a man and a woman, about thirty years old, wearing coarse cotton-padded clothes. One of them was holding a sleeping child in her arms. They were walking towards Su Nuan, looking around from time to time. At first, Su Nuan didn't pay much attention to her, thinking that they were just an ordinary family of four, and the child was tired from visiting the temple fair and fell asleep.
But when the two men walked past Su Nuan holding the child, the child's face, which was originally buried in the man's arms, was partially exposed. Su Nuan took a look and immediately felt something was wrong.
The sleeping child in the man's arms was Congcong, the child of the family that had shared the table with Su Nuan and the others. Logically speaking, two adults would not let their child be taken care of by others when they take them out to play. Moreover, the man and woman looked around from time to time, and the child was sleeping quietly, which was obviously unusual. At this time, Su Nuan remembered that from the 1980s to the 1990s, due to the lack of popularization of electronic surveillance, human traffickers were rampant, resulting in many children being abducted.
This has caused many families to lose their children and their families to be broken apart. Even in the 21st century, many families have been searching for their children for more than ten or twenty years without success.
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