Introduction: The Long Street Banquet is a festival and a traditional festival of ethnic minorities. At the Long Street Banquet, every household sets up a banquet to pray for blessings and celebrate. So which ethnic group’s festival is the Long Street Banquet? When will the Long Street Banquet be held? The following is my introduction to the origin and customs of the Long Street Banquet. Friends who are interested should come and take a look.
The Long Street Feast is a traditional festival of the Hani people. It is held in October every year and is a blessing feast. In addition to the long street feast, the traditional festivals of the Hani people include June Year, Yekuza, Huosese, Zalet, October Year, Ga Tangpa Festival, New Rice Festival, Mother's Day, Elderly Day, Torch Festival, etc. .
The Hani people originated from the ancient Qiang people. They mostly live on the mountainside, and their villages are built according to the mountains. The Hani people are mainly engaged in agriculture and are good at growing tea. They have a long history of growing tea. Gelang and Nannuo Mountain in Xishuangbanna are important Pu'er tea production areas, and their tea production accounts for one-third of the output of Yunnan Province. The Hani people are mainly distributed between the Yuanjiang River and the Lancang River in Yunnan, China, and live in clusters in Honghe, Jiangcheng, Mojiang, Xinping, Zhenyuan and other counties.
The origin and custom of the Long Street Banquet
The Long Street Banquet is a traditional custom of the Hani people. Whenever the "Angmatu" festival comes, the Hani people will put it in the village. Have a banquet and celebrate the festival together. During the celebration, hundreds of tables were lined up like a long queue, hence the name "Long Street Banquet".
In the Ailao Mountains of Yunnan, where the Hani people gather, many Yi people still live. These Yi people in southern Yunnan are quite different from the Yi people in Sichuan in terms of customs. They live on terraced fields and like to wear Hani trousers. In recent years, the Yi people in Yuanyang County, Yunnan Province have even imitated the Hani people and started a long street feast.
The Hani people’s long street feast is usually held during the “Angmatu” festival in October or December every year, while the local Yi people’s long street feast is held on the first Dragon Day of the New Year. The Yi people will adhere to their family values ??to the death, and the long street banquet here also reflects their worship of the family. The entire celebration will last for two days. The first day is the dragon sacrifice, and the second day is the long street banquet.
The Hani Chief’s Street Banquet starts from the first Dragon Day in October of the lunar calendar and lasts for 3-5 days. The Hani people begin their year with the tenth month of the lunar calendar. It is the most solemn festival of the year, equivalent to the Spring Festival of the Han people, so it is called the "October Year" and also the "Angmatu" festival. During the festival, there are activities such as worshiping ancestors, hosting banquets to welcome guests, and singing drinking songs.
The "Angmatu" Festival is a festival for the Hani people to worship the village god and worship the dragon to pray for rain. On the first day of every festival, the leader of the village would go to the center of the dragon forest at the head of the village to set up a sacrificial table and slaughter friendly pigs without mottled hair, inviting the dragon to come and celebrate the festival with everyone. After inviting the dragon, the leader cuts the dragon's pork into pieces equal to the number of households in the village and distributes them to each household.
On the second day of the "Angmatu" festival, every household makes yellow glutinous rice, three-color eggs, pig, chicken, fish, duck meat, beef jerky, muntjac jerky, meat floss, peanuts and other nearby dishes. 40 kinds of Hani-style dishes are prepared with wine and placed in the designated street. One or two tables are set up for each family, and tables are placed for each household along the street, forming a street banquet of several hundred meters (locally called Changlong Banquet or Street Wine). ).
During the banquet, the gongs and drums were noisy and it was very lively. The whole village, men, women and children, dressed in festive costumes, with their daughters and old people supporting them, came and went from all directions. Spend. When entering, the host takes the lead seat, and other people voluntarily sit around the long table according to their gender, age, and hobbies. When the dishes of each household are served, they are brought to the leader first, let the leader taste them, and accept the leader's sincere toast. The leader picks out some of the dishes from each household, piles them together, and then distributes them everywhere. This kind of mixed dishes signals that the whole village people work together to worship the gods to welcome the dragon and celebrate the happiness of the whole village people. festival.
The long street banquet began. The leader led the whole village to raise their wine glasses and wish good luck in the coming year. Anyone who attends the banquet will first eat the dragon pork cut into small pieces placed in the center of the table with chopsticks to indicate that the dragon is in their hearts, and then eat other dishes. Just like when a tourist encounters a long street banquet, people will give up their seats one after another, pull you to the table, and entertain you warmly. The guests and hosts eat food, drink wine, and bless each other together, and they are full of joy. During the banquet, the old people took advantage of the wine and brought out various musical instruments to sing and dance. After the young men and women had had enough wine and food, they met in the bamboo forest and fell in love.
When the banquet ended at five o'clock in the afternoon, the dragon head beat the drum and walked around the banquet under the dragon tree. Everyone clasped their hands to send the dragon home. At night, when the banquet disperses, young men and women sing, dance, and fall in love. Stay up all night. Such an event takes place for three days and three nights.