Yangjia Village in Gaochun District is famous for its unique Dragon King belief, and the Xing Long activity has been a grand event in local area for about 500 years. This activity can integrate economy, consanguinity and culture factors in this village, and profoundly affected social structure and physical space of this Village. Many researches have been conducted to explore similar phenomena in other places. For example, through the setting of temples, residents in Foshan can maintain their hierarchical communities in a reasonable size (Lin, 2009). Another study shows the influence of Li-jia institution on folk believes and the development of residential area in Quanzhou (Chen, 2013). These researches gave us a paradigm by analyzing the relevance among folk believes, ritual activities and public spaces. However, there is little researches notice that this connection can be dynamic and multifarious. Secondly, due to rapid changes of settlements in recent decades, studies of this field must show the understanding of historical social and physical context. This article tries to explain how the watery environment affect folk belief and ritual activity in Yangjia Village at different historical periods. Based on field works, this study describes the details of both daily and festival ritual activities, and shows how these events happen in public spaces. Finally, this study analyzes the relevance between ritual activities and historical physical spaces, and put forwards that residents take the “reappearance of historical spatial” as an intangible spatial strategy to express their understanding of social structures in the public space.

Authors:
Shuyong Chao, Nanjing University, China

About the Presenter(s)
Shuyong Chao is a PhD student affiliated with the School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Nanjing University. His academic interests focus on Chinese architectural history, urban history and architectural heritage.

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