Unlike most ethnic groups in China, who regard the first month of winter and spring as the New Year, the Dai celebrate the New Year in about ten days before and after the Ching Ming Festival of the lunar calendar, which is the Water Splashing Festival, or you can call it the "Buddha Bathing Festival".
So why is there a Water Festival? Legend has it that a long time ago, a ruthless demon king took over Xishuangbanna and snatched seven beautiful girls to be his brides. The girls were naturally reluctant, but they were unable to defeat the Demon King, so they came up with a solution. One night, one of the girls prepared good wine and meat, and she got the Demon King drunk and induced him to reveal his weakness.
On the other hand, the king was afraid of being strangled by his own hair, so the girl took advantage of his drunkenness and pulled out one of his hairs to strangle him. The king's head fell off, but turned into a ball of fire, rolled wherever the fire burned to where, burned down the house, burned up the grain. In order to extinguish the fire, people kept pouring water on the head of the Demon King and finally extinguished the fire in the sixth month of the Dai calendar. So people designated that day as the Water Festival, which means to get rid of disasters and welcome the old and the new, and to welcome a beautiful new life.
The sixth month of the Dai calendar is around the Qingming Festival of the lunar calendar. This is the time of vibrant life, but because Yunnan's climate is relatively mild and pleasant, the weather is already a bit hot around the time of the Water Splashing Festival. In this slightly hot weather, people gather in the square to splash water on each other, not only to cool off, but also to represent blessings, the more they are splashed, the more blessings they receive.
The Water Splashing Festival can be said to be the Dai's biggest and most important festival, this festival is not a day on the end, but to maintain three to seven days, in so many days, of course, is not only splashing water even if the festival. In fact, splashing water is only one of the day's activities, in the other days, people also want to row dragon boats, put the high rise, young men and women together to throw bags to play and exchange materials.
Dragon boat paddling must be familiar to all of us, and we often say that the difference between dragon boat racing is not very big, then "put high up" is what?
Put on the high rise, in fact, a little similar to our New Year's celebration fireworks, but "high rise" volume and weight can be much larger. Because it is made from the whole of the large bamboo, first selected to use the whole of the large bamboo, the inside of the bamboo section with a tool to open, and then loaded with gunpowder, so that the made of the high rise can jump into the air after the ignition of two or three hundred meters. People also through it to pray for good weather, step by step. However, the release of high rise is not just a family activity, each village in the festival time usually also held a competition to see which village put the highest, but the results of the competition is not the most important, the important thing is that we can get together to celebrate the festival, harvest joy.
Besides these, "Throwing Bags" is also an important activity in the Dai New Year, and the "Flower Bags" used in the Throwing Bags are usually made by the Dai girls themselves. Beautiful flower cloth and beautiful silk thread are selected, and after sewing, cotton seeds or other granular fillers are put inside. The finished flower bag is about the size of an orange, diamond-shaped, with silk threads decorating all four corners.
Throwing bags of this activity is mainly unmarried young men and women to participate in play, people get together to throw each other flower bag, the girls stand on one side, the boys stand on the other side, the girls threw the flower bag, the boys look at the right to pick up, received and then threw the flower bag to the girl, in case you can't pick up the girl on the line to a gift or a flower. And many young men and women also in a throw a catch back and forth to find their sweetheart.
Because Yunnan has beautiful peacocks and elephants, there are usually peacock dances and white elephant dances performed during the festivals, and the whole festival can be described as wonderful and full of joy. Different geographic locations and natural products, resulting in the Dai people's very distinctive customs and culture of the festival, but also so that we have the honor to learn about the "Water Festival" this full of attraction of the festival.