Zhetang Shehuo Fire Festival

Item name and level

The Shehuo Fire Festival appears in Appendix 2, the district-level ICH list, of the third batch of district-level ICH material; the appendix states that the list contains 22 items in total, and gives the name as "Shehuo Fire Festival".

On the Folk Customs page of the Lishui District People's Government website, alongside the Luoshan Great Dragon, the Putang Bridge Cishan Temple Fair, the horse-lantern dance and the lion dance gathering, a separate entry is given under the name "Zhetang Shehuo Fire Festival". In a reply of 7 November 2024 on the protection of folk skills and customs, the Lishui District Agriculture and Rural Affairs Bureau names the Luoshan Great Dragon and the Shehuo Fire Festival among others. This entry takes its Chinese title from the wording on the Folk Customs page, records the item type as folk custom and the level as district level, and leaves the batch number and the guardian unit pending verification.

Points in doubt

The name "Zhetang Shehuo Fire Festival" appears as an entry heading on the Folk Customs page of the district government website; Appendix 2 of the third-batch district list and the reply of the agriculture and rural affairs bureau give only "Shehuo Fire Festival". Both wordings are reproduced without being merged, and no conclusion is drawn from them as to the area in which the custom is practised or the places where it is held.

To be added

The dates and places of the festival, the way it is organised and the teams involved, the ritual sequence and the props used, the participation of the villages around Zhetang, the bearers, and the project number and publication year in the third-batch district list are all absent from the cited sources. The two government sources cited record the project name only and say nothing about the content of the custom, so until further sources are found this entry records no detail of the festival.