Zha Cai, also known as paper tie, is a kind of traditional handicrafts used for folk sacrificial activities that are tied into a skeleton with strips, and then formed with colored paper and silk paste, and Zha Cai handicrafts can be divided into two categories: underworld products and divine products. In the old days, most of the artists were concentrated in the county seat, so that the people of the four towns and eight villages came to buy goods and invited them to go to the user's home to make it.

Zha Cai Shen products are mostly used in the funeral folk activities of the dead, its categories are: Ling Pavilion, Statue Pavilion, Mingjing Pavilion, Coffin Pavilion, Silk Flag, Soul Flag, Jinshan Yinshan, Money Tree, Flower Basket, Naihe Bridge, Cornucopia, Golden Boy, Jade Girl, Fang Xiang, Fang Wall, Open Road God, Lion, Elephant, Deer, Horse, Car, Boat and other 33 kinds, large households, but also to tie up courtyards, beds, cages, tables and cabinets, utensils and musical instruments and other playthings.

Zha Cai Shenpin for the holding of religious activities to worship the gods of gifts and signs, gifts such as pigs, cattle, sheep, fish, peaches, pomegranates, Buddha's hand, grain spike shape, signs have barrel-shaped flags, pagodas, flower trees, lanterns, umbrellas, buckets, rainbow bridges, ladders, etc.

There are four rules in this industry, which means that there are four kinds of people who cannot be tied to paper people.

If you don't tie a pregnant woman and don't pierce it, because the pregnant woman has two lives and is angry, most of them will be haunted by the things before they died.

Two do not tie the shrew who is good at scolding the street in the village, and almost every woman in the village who is doing good things, especially scolding people, is called an ugly one, you want to match her with a pair of boys and girls to go down, and the underworld may not be peaceful.

This kind of industry not only refers to the color maker, but also the executioner, the coffin maker of the coffin shop, and the post-mortem and the second leatherman who sew the corpse.

The four do not pierce the death of the Qingming Festival, because the resentment of such people is usually stronger than that of a pregnant woman with two lives.

The last colorsmith in our village is called Cui Jin, when he was born, there was a monk who happened to go to his house to fast, and after hearing the baby's cry, he felt that it was a blessing, and he also secretly sighed that there was fate. So the monk took the initiative to ask to see the baby, the family readily agreed, the monk looked at the baby who was still in swaddling clothes, and then shook his head again and again, and then said to Cui Jin's parents, this child has a lot of yin in his life, but he lacks gold in the five elements, so it is better to directly name the gold character to keep him safe. The family saw that the monk was dressed in plain clothes and did not look like an impostor who cheated on food and drink, so they believed the monk's words and directly named him Jinzi.

Sure enough, as the monk expected, Cui Jin was easy to recruit ghosts when he was young, and the evil scared was even more frequent, so the family looked for masters everywhere to crack it, and finally found Cui Jin's master.

Cui Jin's master is a well-known local Zha Cai craftsman, in the early years is a stunt, because Zha Cai assumed the role of the guide of the underworld, so the living are very taboo about this, and those who have a heartfelt fear of death and corpses are often afraid of death and superstition. In addition to being a colorsmith, the master is also a gentleman with some skills, that is, what we often call a god, and Cui Jin also worshipped the master directly after being helped by the master.

Although this is a business that specializes in making money from the dead, but whether the paper man paper horse is good or not, all depends on the skill of the color maker, in the past, it was often said that "the dead are great", if the master of the paper man is high to a certain point, it is not just as simple as making money. The paper man and paper horse tied by the skilled paper man will come to life when no one is watching, or bring the dead back to life with the help of the paper man and paper horse.

Cui Jin has studied with the master for 20 years, and his skills have become more and more proficient, and the master's skills have also been learned by him, and he himself has become a little fluttery after a long time. However, the master never let him take over the work alone, and every time Cui Jin asked questions, the master would say that each family in this industry could only have one color-fixing craftsman in charge, and the rest of the apprentices could only take over the work by themselves after the master had washed his hands in the golden basin. Every time he said this, Cui Jin was unconvinced, he said that he knew, but there were a hundred disbelievings in his heart, because the master finally explained very seriously, if there are two main things in one school, one of them will suffer disaster.

Young people have some skills in their hands that they can't hold back, once the master went out to work for people, Cui Jin was left alone at home, and Cui Jin sat in the courtyard and practiced his hand work seriously according to the master's request. At this moment, the door was suddenly pushed open, and a middle-aged man in his forties walked in from the outside.

"Master, my family has a funeral, and we need to tie something to accompany the funeral."

"Mmmm, but my master is out, I don't know when I'll come back, or you will come back tomorrow."

"Ah, how can you wait, people are in a hurry, you have to ask for wow, you can help, you can ask for as much as you want."

The man couldn't help wiping his tears as he spoke, Cui Jin looked at the man in front of him with pity, but the master's words didn't dare to disobey, and when he was in a dilemma, the man knelt down with a thud.

"Please, be kind, the dead are great."

Seeing this scene, Cui Jin hurriedly stepped forward and picked up the man, but he pulled hard, but he couldn't pull it up, as if the man's legs and feet were filled with lead.

"Okay, the dead are the greatest, I'll explain to the master when I go back."

The two reached an agreement, Cui Jin immediately started to do it, the work in his hands was very quick, not to mention the speed was also very exquisite, and he pierced all the sacrifices according to the man's requirements in half a day. Looking at the thing in front of him, the man quickly took out the money and handed it to Cui Jin with both hands, and kept saying words of thanks in his mouth, and then made a gesture to kneel down and thank him, but fortunately Cui Jin was quick-eyed.

The man left with his things satisfied, Cui Jin shook the money in his hand and couldn't help but be overjoyed, his first business was faster than the master's usual orders combined, and he would not be happy if the master came back. Thinking of this, Cui Jin hummed a little song proudly, swaying left and right in the yard, and his state of getting carried away was like a child who picked up candy.

It was just dark, and the master pushed the door in with wine and food, Cui Jin trotted forward to take the things in the master's hand, went back to set the table and set up the seat, and waited for the master to wash up and go into the house to eat, and thought about how to tell the master about the day. But before he could think about it, he heard the master in the courtyard shouting his name, Cui Jin didn't know why, so he hurriedly ran out to check, and as soon as he got out of the house, he saw the master standing at the door of the house where the bamboo strips of white paper were placed and looked at him.

"Did you use the contents today?"

The master asked solemnly, Cui Jin was excited in his heart, and secretly said in his heart that it was not good, this stinking scolding must be indispensable, so he had no choice but to tell the master what happened during the day in 1510. After listening to Cui Jin's story, the master turned pale and said nothing, and then stared at him for a while, sighed heavily, and then walked silently towards the house, and Cui Jin also followed the master back to the house.

At the dinner table, Cui Jin silently looked at the master in front of him without saying a word, and the master took a sip of the wine in the cup, paused for a moment, and then spoke.

"Whether it's a blessing or a curse can only be left to fate, but you have to remember that if you take on a job in the future, you must abide by the rules of this industry. These are the rules left by the ancestors, and there must be a reason for his existence, remember to be cautious! ”

Cui Jin couldn't help nodding his head in agreement, but his heart was still full of doubts, whether the master drank too much today or was too frightened, didn't he just take a job, and it wouldn't be like this. After the master finished speaking, he motioned for Cui Jin to eat, and the two did not mention this topic again, chatting and eating and drinking as usual, and then went back to their rooms to rest after the end.

Cui Jin drank a little too much tonight, and when he returned to the room, he fell asleep, and slept until the middle of the night, and the feeling of distending his lower abdomen made him wake up from his dream, and he ran to the toilet outside with his pants. After the solution was solved, Cui Jin walked slowly into the house comfortably, and at this moment, he suddenly saw a long-haired woman standing in the corner of the courtyard, because he had seen this kind of thing often since he was a child, and he was not very scared in his heart, but he also felt uncomfortable in the middle of the night, so he pretended not to see it and ran back to the room.

Back in the house, Cui Jin immediately got into the quilt and continued to sleep, and when the surrounding movement gradually became smaller, he suddenly found that there was still a person sleeping on the bed, and he was sleeping sideways after entering the quilt, not paying attention to the other side of the bed, and now the sound of someone's breathing came behind him. Listening to the sound of exhaling and inhaling evenly, Cui Jin's heart fluttered, but the urgent curiosity in his heart made him slowly turn around to see what was going on, so he began to quietly turn his body around.

When he saw the thing lying next to him, he gasped, it was actually a paper man, and Cui Jin recognized at a glance that it was the paper man he had pierced during the day. When he looked closely, he found that the ears, eyes, and mouth of the paper man were sealed, and there were two holes in his nose that were breathing.

After a while, Cui Jin tiptoed under the bed, ready to escape from the room to wake up the master, and then come back to see what the paper man wanted to be, he gently stepped back to the door, staring at the paper figure on the bed, and then opened the door, and when he turned his head to run out, it was dark in front of him as if he had hit something. The touch was soft, like a ball of cotton, Cui Jin was so frightened that when he took a few steps back and looked again, he saw a woman with a big belly and long hair blocking the door, the woman's face was blue and bloodless, and when she looked down, there was blood under her stomach, how could she look like a person.

Cui Jin screamed and sat on the ground, the black eyes of the woman in front of him rolled her eyes and stared at Cui Jin, her mouth gurgling, I don't know what she was doing, suddenly, he felt that the paper figure behind him seemed to have come down from the bed, at this time Cui Jin was already scared to the extreme, and he couldn't make a sound in his throat, and finally his eyes rolled and he fainted.

I don't know how long it took, Cui Jin was woken up by someone pouring a basin of cold water, and when he woke up, he saw that there were people standing around him, and after a while, he knew from the mouths of the people around him that the master died for some reason last night, and he didn't know if what happened to him was a dream or a real experience.

In addition to the four no-tie in the color industry, there is a big taboo, two are not chaotic, no rules are not a circle, if the rules are broken, it can only harm others and themselves.

A big taboo: taboo to open the eyes before burning, where the funeral to burn the paper, must be in its four ears, eyes, mouth, nose, must be pricked with a needle, but this paper man can not casually paint it with the eye.

On the one hand, this practice is to let the paper man listen and see, and on the other hand, to make the paper man obedient.

Two do not mess: if you tie a pair of boys and girls in the lottery, the last color must be red and green.

Because the highest level of red official clothing in ancient times was the highest ideal of ancient men, the ancients attached great importance to etiquette and rules. The woman is beautiful with green clothes and eyebrows, green is a symbol of women's status, and the difference between respect and inferiority is that the housewife wears green, and the marriage wears a green wedding dress to show her identity.

Paper horses and paper cows matched with red men and green women, usually men burn white horses, women burn cattle, which originates from Zhou Yi, because men are yang, corresponding to the Qiangua, the animal represented by the Qiangua is the horse, and the female is yin, corresponding to the Kun hexagram, and the animal represented by the Kun hexagram is the cow.

In addition, there are folklores that women often do laundry and cook at home, and every housework seems to be related to water, and when women are old, there is a pass on Huangquan Road to drink dirty water before and after life. The reason why a cow is tied with paper is to let the cow drink water and wash it for her, and the man has been running around all his life in order to support his family, riding a horse to the underworld to protect him from Pingchuan.