The Dai people generally believe in Hinayana Buddhism, many festivals and Buddhist activities. The Water Splashing Festival held in the sixth month of the Dai calendar every year is the grandest festival, when it is necessary to set up a feast and invite monks and friends and relatives to congratulate each other in the way of splashing water. During the Water Splashing Festival, there are a lot of various Dai snacks in addition to abundant wine and dishes. The more important festivals of the Dai people are the Door Closing Festival and the Door Opening Festival, which are all Hinayana Buddhist festivals. Xinping, Yuanjiang, Jinggu, Jinping and other places Dai Spring Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, etc., the content and activities are the same as the local Han Chinese.
In Xishuangbanna Dai, a house, the whole village to help, the completion of the new house to congratulate the new house, the first upstairs is a young man, carrying the head of the bull, singing blessing songs, strong men to carry the box, married women to hold the bedding, the girls with the meal in turn, then set up the tripod on the fire, set up the table, set the wine and food, singing congratulations to the new house song, the townspeople also want to give the hosts to send a number of symbols of good luck, gifts. Gifts.
The Dai people also worship their own village community God, the Dai people called "to go to Raman", meaning the protection of God, to worship twice a year, before planting rice seedlings to worship in order to pray for a good harvest, after the fall harvest to worship is in order to give thanks. Each family prepares tributes and sends them to the room where the god of the community is enshrined, and after reciting the words of worship, everyone eats. New members of the society are offered chickens, wine and strips of bacon to the god of the society. In Yuanjiang, Xinping and other places of the Dai, generally worship the Dragon Tree, the Dragon God, Yuanjiang Dai every year in March of the lunar calendar sacrifice of the Dragon Tree, the village to kill the red bull, kill the red bull before the body with white ash painted patterns, but also in the cattle on the body of the Phi red and green cloth. In the same month, but also to kill the pig sacrifice "heaven and earth mother" in order to bless the livestock peace.
Marriage customs
"Catch pendulum cassoulet" is the Xishuangbanna young men and women to food rumors of love, that is, the girl cassoulet chicken to the market to sell, if the buyer happens to be the girl's man of choice, the girl will take the initiative to take out a stool, so that it sits beside them, through conversation, such as the two sides of the love affair, two people! The two of them will take the chicken and carry the stool to the woods to express their love for each other; if the buyer is not the girl's lover, the girl will double the price.
"Eat small wine", in the men and women engaged to marry, the male side picking the food and wine to the female side of the house to invite guests, when the guests dispersed, the male side of the three male companions accompanied by the female side of the female side of the female side of the three female companions, **** set a table **** meal. "Eat small wine" is said to eat three dishes: the first is hot; the second should be more salt; the third should have sweets. This indicates heat, depth and sweetness. The completion of the new house to congratulate the new house, the first upstairs is a young man, carrying a bull's head, singing the blessing song, the strong men to carry boxes, married women holding bedding, the girls with the meal in turn, and then set up a tripod on the fire, set up the table with food and wine, singing congratulations on the new house song, the townspeople also want to give the hosts to send some symbols of good luck gifts.
Wedding day both sides of the family to hold a wedding, mostly in the female family first. Wedding banquet, the table should be covered with green banana leaves, dishes symbolizing good luck blood Wang (white Wang), rice cakes and various dishes. Before the banquet, the bride and groom should do the tethering ceremony, that is, by the bridegroom with a white thread around the shoulders of both sides, and two white threads were tethered to the wrists of the bride and groom, symbolizing purity, and then by the elderly will be pinched into triangles of glutinous rice dipped in salt, placed on a tripod on the fire on the apex, and then allowed to burn naturally come off, symbolizing the love of the iron as solid.
Costumes
The Dai are divided into "Dry Dai", "Water Dai" and "Flower-waisted Dai", and their different decorations represent the costume culture of their branches. In particular, the "flower waist Dai" costumes of Xinping and the Dai costumes of Jinping Qing Dynasty are of great cultural value.
The Dai costumes are elegant and beautiful, not only practical, but also highly decorative, reflecting the love of life and the national personality of the beauty of harmony. There is not much difference in the dress of men in different places, and they usually wear collarless lapel or large lapel and small-sleeved short shirts with long pants underneath, and wrap their heads with white cloth, water-red cloth or blue cloth.
The costumes of Dai women vary from region to region. The Dai women in Xishuangbanna are wearing tight underwear of various colors, tight collarless narrow-sleeved shirts, and colorful tunic skirts, long as the feet, and fine silver belts to bind the skirts; the Dai women in the Dehong area, part of the short tunic skirts, colorful, part of the (such as Lucy, Yingjiang, etc.) are wearing white or other light-colored lapel shirts, pants, and bundle an embroidered girdle, and then after the wedding, they wear short shirts and lapel skirts; Xinping, Yuanjiang, and the Dai women are wearing white or other light-colored short shirts, and the Dai women are wearing short shirts and long pants, with an embroidered waist, and after marriage, they wear short shirts with lapel skirts, and the Dai women wear short shirts and short skirts. Uniform skirt; Xinping, Yuanjiang area of the "flower waist Dai", wearing a cardigan, with a black skirt, skirt decorated with colorful cloth and silver bubbles, decorated with various patterns, brilliant. All kinds of Dai women's clothing can show the beautiful and slender posture of women.
The Dai women love to keep long hair and tie it on the top of their heads, some of which are decorated with combs or flowers, some of which are wrapped with head scarves, some of which wear tall hats, and some of which wear big hats with pointed tops, each of which presents its own show, each of which reveals its own beauty, and each of which is quite chic.
Food
Rice and glutinous rice are the main food. The Dai of Dehong mainly eat round-grained rice, and the Dai of Xishuangbanna mainly eat glutinous rice. Usually is now pounded now eat, folk believe that: japonica rice and glutinous rice only now eat now pounded, in order not to lose its original color and flavor, and therefore do not eat or rarely eat overnight rice, used to eat rice with a hand pinch. All the accompanying dishes and snacks are mainly sour, such as sour bamboo shoots, sour pea flour, sour meat and wild sour fruit; like to eat dried sauerkraut, it is said that the reason why the Dai people often eat sour dishes, is due to often eat indigestible glutinous rice food, and sour food to help digestion.
The daily meat diet of pigs, cows, chickens and ducks, do not eat or eat less mutton, the Dai living in the interior of the dog meat, good roasted chicken, roast chicken, fish, shrimp, crabs, snails, moss and other aquatic products. The moss into the dish, is the unique flavor of the Dai dishes. Cooking fish, more into sour fish or baked into lemongrass fish, but also made into fish chopped grits (i.e., fish grilled and whacked into a mud, with coriander and other adjustments), fish jelly, fire fish, eel and other white juice. Eat crabs, generally will be crab shell with meat chopped into crab sauce with rice to eat, the Dai people call this crab sauce for "crab Mangmibu".
Bitter gourd is the most abundant and most consumed daily vegetable. In addition to bitter melon, Xishuangbanna also has a kind of bitter bamboo shoots, so there is a bitter flavor in the Dai flavor, more representative of the bitter dishes are cooked with cow bile juice and other ingredients of the cow skin gazpacho platter.
The Dai region is humid and hot, and there are many kinds of insects. The flavorful dishes and snacks made from insects are an important part of the food of the Dai people. Insects often eaten include cicadas, bamboo worms, big spiders, field turtles, ant eggs and so on. The Dai people are addicted to wine, but the degree of wine is not high, and it is home-brewed with sweet flavor. Tea is a local specialty, but the Dai only drink large-leaf tea without spices. When drinking it, it is only slightly fried on the fire until it is burnt, and it has a slightly mushy flavor when it is brewed and drunk. Chewing betel nut, mixed with tobacco, lime, all day long. More typical foods include dog meat soup pots, pork jerky, pickled eggs and dried eels.
Festivals
The major festivals of the Dai people are the Dai New Year - the Water Festival, the Door Closing Festival and the Door Opening Festival. The "Water Splashing Festival" is a traditional festival of the Dai people to send off the old and welcome the new, which takes place in the middle of April in the Gregorian calendar. The main activities during the festival are worshiping ancestors, piling up sand, splashing water, throwing bags, racing dragon boats, setting off fireworks, singing and dancing, etc. The Dai people generally believe in Hinayana Buddhism. The Dai people generally believe in Hinayana Buddhism, and many festivals are related to Buddhist activities. The Water Splashing Festival held in the sixth month of the Dai calendar every year is the grandest festival, when the Buddha is to be fine, and feasts are held to invite monks and friends and relatives to congratulate each other in the way of splashing water. During the Water Splashing Festival, in addition to wine, dishes should be plentiful, all kinds of Dai flavor snacks are also many. The more important festivals are the Door Closing Festival and the Door Opening Festival, all of which are Hinayana Buddhist festivals.
The Astronomical Calendar of the Dai People
The arithmetic commonly used by the Dai people in Xishuangbanna is called "Vesak", which is influenced by the Han people and other ethnic groups. The multiplication recipes in the Dai book of arithmetic are translated from the Han recipes and those of other ethnic groups; they are used in the language of the ethnic group. The Dai arithmetic has no symbols for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division; the calculation method is from left to right, while calculating, erasing the calculated digits, and finally leaving the remaining number. People who are good at calculating and know the calendar can use this method to accurately project leap years, leap months and eclipses of the sun and moon.
The Dai people call the calendar "Zura Saha" or "Saharacha", and there are many books that record and study the calendar. There are two kinds of common calendar books: one is to project the time of the festival, in which there are a lot of tables, the main contents of many years of the calendar are arranged on it; the other is the annual calendar. The difference between the Dai calendar and the Gregorian calendar is 638 years, i.e., the year 639 of the Gregorian calendar is the first year of the Dai calendar. The Dai calendar takes June as the beginning of the year, and June of the next year is the first year. Due to the leap year and leap month, the day of the festival in June is not fixed, and sometimes it may be extended to July. The Dai New Year's Day is celebrated for three or four days, the first day is New Year's Eve, the last day of the year that is about to pass, the third or fourth day is the first day of the new year, and the rest of the day or two days belong to neither the old year nor the new year. The Dai calendar has a leap year, there are leap months, twelve months in a normal year, odd-numbered months for the big month, thirty days a month; even months for the small month, twenty-nine days a month, a year **** three hundred and fifty-four days. Every three to six years a leap year, fixed in the month of August, which is thirty days. Leap month is two or three years a leap, nineteen years seven leap, fixed leap September, is thirty days, this year is also known as double September. In the Dai calendar, January is called Dengjing and February is called Denggan. The Dai calendar is based on the cycle of the moon's cycle for a month. Therefore, the day sequence of each month is basically the same as that of the Han lunar calendar. The Dai calendar is also the first half of each month is called the first day of the month, the second day of the month ......; the second half of the month is called the second day of the month, the second day of the month ....... The full moon on the fifteenth day of the month is called Deng Shou, and the end of the month is called Deng Da. Dai January for four weeks, there are seven or eight days per week of day counting. The Dai calendar and the lunar calendar, the same, with the dry branch of the chronicle of the year and the day; but the Dai twelve branches of the earth's representative of the object and the Han people are not exactly the same, such as the "son" does not represent the table rat and on behalf of elephants, "chen" does not represent the dragon, but on behalf of the auger or snake.
The Dai people divide the year into three seasons according to the local temperature characteristics, the Dai calendar from January to April for the cold season, from May to August for the hot season, from September to December for the rainy season. In fact, the year is obviously only divided into dry and rainy seasons. Dehong, Gengma, Xinping, Yuanjiang and other places, mainly use the Han Chinese lunar calendar.