The Torch Festival is celebrated *** for three days:
The first day of the Torch Festival: Fire Sacrifice. On this day, villages and hamlets will slaughter cows and kill sheep, share them collectively, and prepare wine and meat to offer to ancestors. At nightfall, people from neighboring villages will set up an altar at a location chosen by the elders, light the sacred fire by striking a stone in the traditional way, and have the Bimo (Yi folk priests) recite scriptures to offer the fire.
The second day of the Torch Festival: Passing the Fire. On this day, families gather under the sacred fire on the altar to hold a variety of traditional festival activities. The boys are expected to emulate the legendary Ati Raba, horse racing, wrestling, singing, bullfighting, goatfighting and cockfighting. The girls follow the example of the legendary ugly woman, dressed in beautiful clothes, put up butter umbrellas, dancing "DuoLuoHuo", Da body dance.
On this day, the most important activity is the beauty contest of the Yi family. Elderly people have to choose the annual beauty contest from among the young girls and boys according to the standard of the legendary hard-working, brave and heroic Ati Raba and the kind, intelligent and beautiful Ash ugly woman.
The third day of the torch festival: sending fire. This is the climax of the whole Liangshan Yi International Torch Festival. When night falls on this day, everyone will hold a torch and race around. Finally, people will be in the hands of the torch together, forming a pile of huge bonfires, happy people will gather around the bonfire to sing, dance, the scene is extremely spectacular. Therefore, it is also known as the "Oriental Carnival Night".
Expanded Information:
Honey people have a long history. p>The Hani ethnic group has a long history, far before the Tang Dynasty that is living in Ning'er, there are Hani, Haoni, Biyao, Kado, Amu self-proclaimed. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, according to the national voluntary collectively known as the Hani ethnic group. The main festivals of the Hani ethnic group are the "October Year" and the "Torch Festival". The first dragon day of the tenth month of the lunar calendar is designated as the first day of the year and is celebrated. Because of the long history of interaction with the Han Chinese, they also celebrate the Spring Festival with the Han Chinese.
June Torch Festival (Ning'er Hani called "toil Zaza"), a village or a family to kill a cow sacrifice "autumn room", the beef will be distributed to each household, cooked, plus green corn female silk peanuts, cucumbers, Beijing beans, glutinous rice for the ancestors, the offering time takes five days. The offering takes five days. June 24th of the lunar calendar, each family with pine firewood tied torches, with dead pine wood research powder fried yellow to make incense, the torch will be lit, with incense sprinkled on the flame to make a loud noise, baking home nooks and crannies and stables, some also scattered to the field corners, in order to show that the "ghosts in addition to the devil".
Then the whole village gets together and sings and dances under the flames of the torches, reveling in the festivities.
Monogamy is the basic marriage system of the Hani people, and those who abandon their wives and remarry have to make amends to their ex-wives and uncle's family. Historically, there is the custom of giving priority to the marriage of aunts and cousins, but cousins are not allowed to marry, and the same family name is generally not intermarried. Young men and women are free to socialize and talk about love before marriage.
Marriage requires the consent of both parents, the two sides of love, please matchmakers, the female parents agreed, young men to participate in the production of women's home labor, drink engagement wine, choose the day of the hire to marry. When they marry, the male family will organize a wedding team, and the female family will have an equal number of people to see them off. At night, the bonfire, young men and women around the bonfire, singing and dancing, lively night.
The bride has a "crying wedding" custom, the morning of the wedding day, the bride, accompanied by the girls and daughters-in-law gathered in the bride's room crying, married women to teach the bride to the in-laws after the etiquette and rules; unmarried girls to congratulate the bride on the beauty of the happiness; the bride is with them to tell them to say goodbye to the elders to ask for advice on life experience, I wish that the female companions to tie the knot as early as possible. The Hani people allow son-in-law to come to the door, the marriage is generally to be the right family, so most of the arranged marriages.
"The Chinese people*** and the State Marriage Law" announced the implementation of the marriage customs have changed a lot, especially the customs of the aunt table priority marriage to eliminate, free love marriage more and more, arranged marriages are decreasing.
Architecture
Housing is generally divided into the main room and the ear room, and some also have a hall, forming a courtyard. The main house is a wooden-framed building with a stone foundation and earthen walls. The roof is covered with thatch or flashings. Upstairs, food and vegetables are piled up, and downstairs is housing. The left and right ear rooms are all made of mud with a flat roof as a sunbathing area, known as the soil palm house. If there are many children, they live in the right ear room. The left ear room is the kitchen.
With the main house on the same level is called the ground hall, usually thatched roof building, upstairs stacking firewood and agricultural tools, downstairs livestock. Poor families usually have only one thatched roof building, with people living upstairs and piling up food and vegetables, and livestock and piles of firewood and agricultural tools downstairs. Since the founding of New China, with the development of production and improvement of life, most of the Hani people live in a building with a tiled house.
Reference: Baidu Encyclopedia - Hani Customs