National customs

From ancient times to the present, Shandong folk culture has been constantly communicating between regions because of immigration, transportation and going out for grades, which is manifested in the evolution of folk customs and has formed a trend of absorption and opening up.

The folk culture brought by immigrants has a far-reaching influence on Shandong folk customs. In the early Ming Dynasty, the policy of "emigrating to a wider countryside" was implemented. From the second year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty to Yongle, a large number of immigrants moved from Sophora japonica in Hongdong County, Shanxi Province to Shandong, Dezhou, Binzhou, Liaocheng, Tai 'an, Heze, Jining and other places, and some moved eastward from Binzhou. In this way, Shanxi immigrants are almost all over Shandong. Shanxi folk customs affect Shandong, such as cooking without fire at the Cold Food Festival. Many residents of several counties in northwest Shandong (now Liaocheng area) immigrated from Zaoqiang County in Zhili (now Hebei Province) in the early Ming Dynasty. Their folk artworks, such as New Year pictures and clay toys, are still close to the style of Zaoqiang. In the early Ming Dynasty, most immigrants from Sichuan to Shandong concentrated in Laizhou. Therefore, the customs of Laizhou are different from those of its eastern neighbors, and many cities have moved to different parts of Shandong, with different folk customs.

Wharf towns along the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, which flourished in the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, such as Dezhou, Linqing, Liaocheng (Dongchang) and Jining in Shandong, have different customs and habits from other parts of Shandong due to the influence of north-south water transportation. Most of these towns have a bamboo lane, where common bamboo weaving shops in the south of the Yangtze River are concentrated, and the teahouse opened on the street is also in the same pavement pattern, selling tea and drinking tea. The Yutang Sauce Garden in Jining was moved from Suzhou along the canal, and its products have maintained the Jiangnan style so far, still using the signboard of "Gusu Old Shop".

A typical example of the folk cultural exchange brought about by going out to find a job is that Shandong people in history went to Kanto, or "went to Kanto". There are roughly two different types of Shandong people who go to Kanto: one is that their families move to the countryside and mountains in the northeast, which has the nature of fleeing, commonly known as "forcing into Kanto"; One is that he lives in Shandong, but he has been doing business in the northeast for most of his life, commonly known as "Jutian". They brought the customs of Shandong to the northeast and back to Shandong. Long-term exchanges have made the folk cultures of the two places have many similarities, especially some folk stories with the same content, such as the story of bald-tailed Lao Li and ginseng, which are also widely circulated in Shandong and Northeast China. Shandong customs are influenced by the northeast, especially Jiaodong.