The scale of "Yue Ye" is variable, and both men, women and children can participate. When they went there, they all dressed up in festive costumes, and the "Singing Team", "Lusheng Team" and opera troupe went together. The main village entertains them with wine and meat. During the day, the guests and hosts sing Dong opera or play Lusheng, and in the evening they sing Dong songs due to each other. They spend three to five days together before leaving. When leaving, the main village will also give pigs and sheep as gifts. Depending on the harvest situation, the next year or several years later, the villagers will return to the other village for a return visit. "Moon Ye" is only performed after the autumn harvest or during the Spring Festival to celebrate the harvest and celebrate the festival while not missing the farming season. "Yue Ye" has a lot of content, mainly including the following seven types:
Yue Ye Opera
"Yue Ye Opera" (being an opera guest), that is, singing Dong opera is the main platform, A variety of collective social activities for folk cultural exchanges are carried out at the same time, usually in the first month of the lunar calendar. The main activities include going from Village A to Village Y to sing Dong opera, singing Dong songs in duet, young men and women making friends, and the elderly visiting relatives and friends, etc. After the New Year, the opera troupe master or singing troupe singer master will make suggestions to the village elders as to which village or villages to go to to sing operas and songs. After discussion and approval by the village elders, they will choose an auspicious day and have two Lahans (young men) take the lead. Go to the designated village to post the red sticker written by the village boss. After the person who delivers the post comes to the designated village, he must go to the Drum Tower and play three Lusheng tunes, and then deliver the post to the veteran of Yi Village. After receiving the letter, the village elder of Yi Village arranged for the wax men in his village to prepare good wine and food to entertain the guests, and at the same time summoned other village elders to discuss. If you agree to accept Jiazhai to come to the "Yueye Opera", please ask the elders of the village to accompany Jiazhai to deliver letters and postcards to the village's Satang to offer three sticks of incense to the Dong goddess Sa, toast three glasses of wine, and bow three times. It shows respect for the ancestors and the villagers (in the Dong village, paying respect to Sa before entering the village is a very serious ceremony, and it is a must-have ceremony for various activities such as the moon festival). The delivered red stickers are then posted on the main gate pillar of the Drum Tower to inform all villagers that a "Moon Show" will come to a certain village on a certain day, so that every household should be prepared. After drinking and eating, the village elder arranged for two wax men to play the Lusheng and send the person who delivered the letter out of the village.
After the village elder received a positive reply, he organized the whole village to make active preparations. On the day of the moon, all men, women, and children in Jiazhai went out together. Before leaving, the village elders first went to the "Sa Hall" to ask "Sa" for protection. Then all the villagers and girls played the Lusheng, beat gongs and drums, invited "Sa" to the drum tower, and first sang three hymns to "Sa" Song, and then sing the three songs for the blessing of "Sa". After everyone finished singing, three iron cannon shots rang out, and everyone started heading to Village Y. When approaching Yizhai, they played the Lusheng and beat the gongs and drums to report the news. The village elder of Yi Village had already summoned everyone from the village to the entrance of the village to set up barriers and sing roadblock songs to welcome the guests. After the guest sang the road-blocking song, the Lahan girl from the main village beat gongs and drums, played the Lusheng and led the guests to the drum tower of the village. The guests walked around the four pillars of the drum tower three times, and the guests rested in the drum tower for a while.
When entertaining guests, most of them come to the house. Each family arranges its own meals without making specific regulations. Each household tries its best to cook in a decent manner to expand the reputation of the village.
Guests usually sing in the main village for three days. If the opera is performed well and the singing is melodious, the host will stay in the camp for two or four more days. On the days of "Yue Ye", the host and guests mainly sing Dong opera during the day. After dinner, the host and guests go to the Drum Tower to sing "Ga Lao" (a big song of the Dong people, a duet between the girl from the host village and the Lahan from the guest village, the host The Lahans from the village sing antiphonally with the girls from the Hakka village), or they go to the singing hall together. Singing "Ga Lao" (a big song of the Dong people) or playing in the singing hall will continue until late at night. In the middle of the night, the young men from the main village go to the girls from the Hakka village to sing love songs to each other, and the young men from the Hakka village also go to the girls from the main village to sing love songs to each other. This is the famous Moon Hall love song of the Dong people.
After three or five days of this, the guest village will say goodbye. When leaving the guest village, every household in the main village wraps glutinous rice, pickled fish and meat with straw for lunch for the guests on the way. Before leaving, the guests and hosts went to the drum tower of the main village to sing a song. Both parties praised each other with songs, and then sang a farewell song. The young men and women in charge of the village take the guests to the gate of the village and give them gifts with red and green feathers tied on towels as souvenirs.
Yue Ye Lao
"Yue Ye Lao" (making guests), usually in the first month of the lunar calendar, the number of people is all the men, women, old and children in the two villages. "Yue Ye Lao" mainly focuses on singing Dong folk songs, singing Tang songs, and young men and women singing love songs.
This type of event belongs to village A and village Y, both young and old, who have a desire for friendship. Village A sends out a lot of posts and sends them to village Y. Village Y receives the invitation and organizes a theater troupe or a lion troupe to go to the meeting. As soon as the guests arrive, the host village organizes girls from the village to block the way with textile machines, farm tools and other objects to welcome the guests, and the guests sing a road-blocking song. After singing, the main village fires three iron cannons, then beats gongs, drums and reeds, leads the guests to the "Sa Sui" altar, holds a ritual, and then leads them into the singing hall under the drum tower. The guest and host each sing three songs. The first is to invite "Sa", and the second is to express welcome and apology. Afterwards, during the day and night, there were performances, lion playing, bullfighting, or men and women from villages A and B performing "Duoye" (antiphonal singing) in the hall. Guests will be released after staying for three or five days (odd numbers are required). When seeing off guests, every household in Jiazhai wraps glutinous rice or glutinous rice cakes in straw, and hangs a string of three to five eggs dyed red and green with floral threads around each package of rice or glutinous rice cakes. It is especially kind to the family, and chickens and ducks are also tied up. As a gift, the whole village collectively gave a sheep, pig or cow. The village girl also gave each of the young people in the guest village a towel. This kind of gift was called a "tail", so that the guests could pick and choose without leaving any of them empty-handed. When seeing off guests, the whole village, young and old, set off cannons, firecrackers, beat gongs and drums, and play the Lusheng to see off guests. Generally, the next year or a few years later, Yi Village feels that the conditions are suitable and sends out invitations again. Invite Jiazhai to return as a guest.
Yue Yexiao
"Yue Yexiao" (being a guest of the society), when rushing to the Spring Society, the girls from Village A and Village Y will be the guests together. When the girls come, Arhat will be there sooner or later. They entertained guests warmly, sang antiphons in the hall during the day, and sang to celebrate the moon at night. This kind of "Yueye" girl does not return the girl, but her brother takes over the other girl's girl.
Yueye Zuolou
"Yueye Zuolou" (congratulations to Drum Tower guests) is usually held at the beginning of the first month of the first year. The inauguration ceremony of the new Drum Tower in Village A was attended by men, women and children in Village Y. The number of people was the same as that of reception, greeting and greeting, but the content of the activities was more lively. Yi Village organized people to make "Na Ma" (i.e. make painted faces), consisting of dozens of people, some carrying "officials", some riding high school stilts, some pretending to be warriors, businessmen, beggars, etc., carrying congratulatory plaques and couplets , beat gongs and drums, play reeds, and set off firecrackers to congratulate. In addition, a team of girls was organized, dressed in festive costumes. When Jiazhai invites visitors to the Drum Tower, they circle around the Drum Tower. People with colorful faces perform various interesting performances, distribute pickled fish, and girls scatter rice crackers. The girls from Jiazhai stopped the official's sedan chair and sang songs to ask for passing money. This kind of guests usually only stay for one day, and they mainly visit the singing hall and sing Helou songs during the day. Such guests can only return to Yi Village when the Drum Tower is being built or renovated.
Yue Ye Ding
"Yue Ye Ding" (being a wedding guest) is also called the girl Luohan guest. This activity lasts for a long time, some lasting several months. It is the best opportunity for the young men and women and their parents on both sides to get to know each other. Some are made by villages, and some are made by surnames. Although they are female Luohanke, they are all run by old people. First, after the elders of two villages (or two surnames) wanted to get together and get married, they signaled to the girl Luohan that when the rice ears were weeping in the fields, the girl from Jia Village used a bamboo to cut off the bamboo leaves, leaving three, five, or seven branches. , tie a cotton flower and a red pepper to the tip of each branch, choose a roadside field at the Arhat's house in Yi Village, insert it quietly, and call it a "table". If there are three branches, it means that it is small, and only some girls will invite some Arhats to participate in the ceremony; if there are more than five branches, it means that the whole village or the whole family will participate in the ceremony, so that even the children in the arms will be included as girls and Arhats to participate. After meeting the Arhats of Yi Village, they brought chickens, ducks and geese to the girl's village (the girl had already secretly informed the news) to go to the girl's village for inspection. At first, the girl and her parents did not admit to having a "foreign", saying that they did not dare to climb high. After many nights of singing, confinement and supper (i.e. cooking midnight meals), and a banquet for the girl and her parents, the girl admitted that she wanted to climb up the family ladder and become a "beautiful person". So both parties decided on an auspicious day and formally set up a "big watch". The "big watch" is made by the girls. The original seven branches are cut down and the bamboo leaves are trimmed. Each girl offers one to two kilograms of the best and whitest cotton, and threads it through with white thread one by one. Then, each bamboo branch was tied up, and some colorful phoenixes with wings spread out were tied on the tips of some bamboos.
Secondly, there are differences in the time of "Yue Ye". "Yue Ye Xi", "Yue Ye Ding" and "Yue Ye Lun" can take as few as three days, as many as five days, and some have seven or nine days. The "Yue Ye Jing" only lasts for one day. "Yue Ye Opera" mainly uses erhu, gongs, small six-tube five-note reeds, etc.
"Yue Ye Lao" mainly uses erhu, gongs, small six-tube five-note reeds, pipa, etc.
"Yue Ye Lun" mainly uses large six-tube three-note reeds, medium-sized six-tube three-note reeds, small six-tube five-note reeds, and also uses pipa and dong flute.
The "Yue Ye Ding" mainly uses corbels.
The road-blocking song is a song sung by the Dong people when welcoming and seeing off guests. It is mostly used on "moon" occasions. The length of "Yueye" is determined by the content, and the number of participants is usually one representative from a family. Led by a prestigious person in the village, they will collectively visit friendly villages. When the guests from Village A are about to arrive at Village Y, everyone from Village Y will go to the entrance of the village to greet them. At the same time, they will set up numerous roadblocks with daily production tools or daily utensils, etc. The two sides will set up a singing formation and sing roadblocking songs in duet. The home team asks questions in a song, and the visiting team answers in a song, with correct answers removing one roadblock at a time. If the answer is wrong, the visiting team will set off firecrackers to express their apology and respect. The home team will remove the roadblocks, welcome the guests into the village, and participate in colorful social activities, such as Dong opera performances, Dong song singing, dragon and lion dances, Lusheng competitions, etc.
At the end of the "Moon Night", the main village assembles a team to see off the guests, and when they arrive at the entrance of the village, they sing a road-blocking song to express their invitation to stay. The affection for each other reflects the unity and friendship between compatriots.