March Street, also known as Guanyin City, is a grand festival for the Bai people in Dali, Yunnan. It is also a material exchange market with strong ethnic characteristics and local flavor in northwest Yunnan. March Street is known as "one street for a thousand years, and one street for a thousand years." It is held every year from March 10th to 21st in the lunar calendar in the west of the ancient city of Dali. The duration of the festival is usually three to five days, sometimes up to ten days.
March Street originated from the Guanyin Temple Fair and has a history of more than 1,000 years. According to legend, Dali, Yunnan, was occupied by the demon Rakshasa at the end of the Sui Dynasty and the beginning of the Tang Dynasty. The people were tortured and miserable. During the Zhenguan period of the Tang Dynasty, Guanyin came after hearing the news and subdued the Rakshasa. From then on, the people lived and worked in peace and prosperity. In order to thank Guanyin for his achievements, people gathered together on the 15th day of the third lunar month, the day when Guanyin descended to earth, to chant sutras to reward the gods. Therefore March Street is also called "Guanyin Festival".
There is a legend about March Street. Once upon a time, there lived a fisherman named Ashan by the Erhai Lake. One day, he returned empty-handed from his boat fishing, so he played a sad song on the seaside. The music moved Axiang, the third princess of the Erhai Dragon King. She came to the boat and helped cast the nets, and each net was full of big fish. During labor, Axiang expressed his love for Ashan, and the two established a happy family. On March 15th, the annual "Moon Street" in the sky has arrived, and gods and goddesses from all walks of life gather in the Moon Palace. Axiang turned into a golden dragon and carried Ashan to the Moon Palace. They saw that the "Moon Street" was filled with pearls, jade, cloud elixir, and everything they wanted. After they returned to the village, they told the villagers about the situation of Moon Street in the sky, and everyone proposed that the Moon Street in the sky should be moved to the human world. From then on, people set up a street market at the foot of Cangshan Mountain every fifteenth day of the third lunar month.
There is another legend about the origin of March Street. A long time ago, there was a tyrant who listened to the slander of an attendant, saying that eating a pair of human eyeballs every day could lead to immortality. This gave the locals It has brought serious disasters to the Bai people. At that time, there was a warrior who was full of magical power. On a day in March, he used a clever trick to lure the tyrant to the foot of Zhonghe Peak in Cangshan Mountain. He summoned a divine dog to bite his throat and drink up his blood, thus annihilating the devil. . Later, in order to commemorate this warrior, everyone gathered at the foot of Cangshan Mountain every year from the 15th to the 20th of the third lunar month to sing and dance. Year after year, the annual "March Street" is formed.
According to historical records, during the Nanzhao Kingdom of the Tang Dynasty, the sixth king of Nanzhao, Yimouxun, met with Cui Zuoshi, the envoy of the Tang Dynasty, in the 10th year of Zhenyuan (794) of Tang Dynasty to establish an alliance at the Cangshan Shrine and set up an iron scroll. In quadruplicate, he vowed to be in eternal harmony with the Tang Dynasty. Yimouxun told all the people to gather in the square in front of the shrine every March 15th to commemorate this oath as heavy as Cangshan Mountain. From then on, March Street was born. In this sense, March Street is also a witness to the reunification of the motherland and national unity.
During the Dali Kingdom of the Song Dynasty, March Street became the largest horse and medicinal material trading market in southern my country. Duan Zhengxing, the seventeenth king of the Dali Kingdom, lived in the 17th year of Shaoxing (1147), Emperor Gaozong of the Song Dynasty. During his thirty-one years in office, he proactively reconciled with the Central Plains dynasty and vigorously developed the economy. At that time, Dali was famous in the Central Plains for producing fine-bred horses. The Southern Song Dynasty set up a horse buying department in Yongzhou, Guangxi to import Dali horses. So Duan Zhengxing turned March Street into a horse trading market, with more than 1,500 good horses traded every year. According to historical records, thousands of merchants gathered in the horse market. Merchants from Huguang and Sichuan exchanged silk, paper and pens, rouge pollen, ginseng and other general merchandise for Dali horses, swords, medicinal materials, as well as precious specialties such as ivory, rhino horn, and deer antlers from Tubo and other countries in the Western Regions. The meeting lasted for more than twenty days. Gao Liangcheng, the prime minister of Dali, also set up a horse racing market, which is also a horse racing. From then on, there was a tradition of horse racing in March Street. During this period, March Street has developed into the largest border trade market in southern my country.
Xu Xiake, a traveler in the Ming Dynasty, once described the grand spectacle of horse racing on March Street: "One and a half miles out from the west gate, you enter the martial arts arena, where all the sheds are built as a market. To the north is the racecourse, where thousands of horses gather, and several people ride horses. While galloping in the middle, the men and women were mixed together, and they could not tell each other." Li Yuanyang, a Bai scholar of the Ming Dynasty, also wrote in "Yunnan General Chronicles": "On the 15th day of March. Products from various provinces are traded under Cangshan Mountain. From the Yonghui period of the Tang Dynasty to the present, the city has not changed. "The development scale of March Street in the Qing Dynasty has become larger and larger. At that time, Zhao Jiannan of Dali once wrote a poem describing the grand scene of March Street: "In those prosperous spring and autumn years, millions of money flowed like water. Fine goods from Sichuan, Guangzhou, Suzhou and Hangzhou, and the trading mall ranked first in Asia." This shows that March Street already has considerable influence. international impact.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, especially since the reform and opening up, the scale and influence of March Street have become stronger every year. Since 1991, the 15th day of the third lunar month has been designated as the "Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture March Street Ethnic Festival".
The March Street was originally a temple fair with religious activities to preach scriptures and Buddhism. With the development of social economy, it has now developed into a grand event for material and cultural exchanges. During the "March Street", businessmen from neighboring counties and friends from thousands of miles away come from all directions to participate in the transactions, including brothers and sisters from the Han, Yi, Hui, Tibetan, Naxi and Nu ethnic groups from far and near. Gathering. Traditionally, March Street was mainly about the trading of mules and horses, mountain goods, medicinal materials, tea and other materials. Nowadays, a variety of goods are even more dazzling. The most attractive thing for customers on March Street is the counter for special ethnic products. Here there are mercerized threads used by Bai women to sew collared jackets, bracelets, earrings, bead chains, and apron chains beloved by Bai women, and felt hats favored by Tibetan compatriots. And butter pots, lace ribbons needed by the Naxi and Yi people, etc., are rich and diverse, and everything is available. In addition to large-scale material exchanges, March Street also holds traditional horse racing, dragon boat racing, crossbow shooting, swing playing and other folk sports competitions, as well as Dabenqu singing, Dongjing ancient music, and ethnic song and dance performances, every year. , bustling with excitement.
March Street is not only a grand annual material exchange and national sports and art conference for the people of all ethnic groups in western Yunnan, but also plays an important role in strengthening national unity and promoting larger-scale economic and cultural exchanges at home and abroad. Positive effect. For example, in 1992, 22 provinces and cities across the country organized a group exhibition, and the business transaction volume reached 690 million yuan. There are also international friends and businessmen from more than ten countries in the East and West who come for sightseeing and shopping, which has a strong color of international exchanges. Every year, there are millions of merchants and tourists from all provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions across the country, as well as from more than 30 countries including the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Shenzhou, Singapore, Thailand, Myanmar, and Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. The Bai March Street Ethnic Festival has become an important bridge for the world to know Dali and for Dali to go global.