Taijiang Miao Sisters Festival, also known as "Sisters Rice Festival", is a traditional festival of the Miao people around Laotun and Shidong in Taijiang County, which is held from the 15th to the 17th day of the third month of the lunar calendar every year. At that time, young Miao men and women put on festive costumes and gather in Rongjiang, Yangjia, and Yizhai to celebrate this traditional festival rich in ethnic characteristics. The time of the Sisters' Festival varies among the Miao tribes in Taijiang County, but most of them celebrate the festival between the first month and the fifth month of the lunar year. The most representative and influential one is the Sisters' Festival in Shidong area.
The Miao Sisters Festival, called "Nonggaliang" in the Miao language, it is centered on young Miao women to invite lovers to travel together to the party song, eat sister meal, jumping Lusheng wooden drum dance, mutual gifts, enter into a marriage contract as the main activities. It has been described as "the festival hidden in the stamen of flowers" and "the oldest Oriental Valentine's Day".
Legend
The predecessor of the Sisters' Festival was the "Pohui". Miao Sisters Festival is a wider range of hundreds of villages more than 100,000 Miao in the rituals and customs are complicated or similar, in the legend is also slightly different, the origin of the legend, there are mainly the following three kinds.
1. "Sisters Festival Song"
The legend of the Miao Sisters Festival mainly comes from the "Sisters Festival Song" which is more than 500 lines long. According to the legend, there are two aunt's children, the male is called Jindan, the female Ajiao, they both grew up as childhood sweethearts, the two small, after growing up, each other produced love, Jindan must marry Ajiao, Ajiao must marry Jindan, but was opposed by their parents and clansmen. Jiao's parents want her to marry back to her uncle's family (the old Miao custom of returning the head of the mother). Jiao did not want to marry back to her uncle's family, but insisted on marrying Jindan; Jindan also did not want to marry someone else, and had been waiting for Jiao. They secretly date every day for the sake of their faithful love. Fearing that their parents and the elders of the village would find out, the two of them met in the wild to talk about their love. Each time, Jiao used her bamboo basket with needle and thread to secretly hide the rice and bring it to Jindan to eat. Year after year, after a lot of trials and tribulations and tenacious resistance, they finally married. The story of "Sisters' Rice" is based on the fact that in Miao language, the food brought to the lover is called "Hidden Rice", which is translated as "Sisters" in Chinese.
Later, I don't know how many years later, legend has it that there are 800 girls in the Shi Dong area of Taijiang County who can't find a boyfriend and can't get married; and there are 800 young men in the Samping Datang area who can't find a daughter-in-law and are playing single. Elderly people remembered the story of Ajiao and Jindan's "Sisters' Rice", and taught the girls to use Ajiao and Jindan's method to invite the 800 young men in Sanbian Datang to have "Sisters' Rice". In this way, everyone has found his or her love, a pair of pairs, a pair of married couples. Since then, the "Sisters' Rice" has evolved into a festive event where young men and women select couples as the main content.
The Hmong men and women admired Ajiao and Jindan's persistence in love, and followed their example by going up the slope to meet each other. The Sisters' Festival was thus named. According to the "Ancient Songs of the Miao", areas inhabited by the Miao used to celebrate the Sisters' Festival, but nowadays it has been lost in most of the areas, except for Taijiang County, where the custom is still intact.
2. According to legend, there is a large village of the Miao people in the Geyi area of Taijiang County, and the men in the village go hunting in faraway places every year, and do not come back for a long, long time. There were also many women and children in the village and seventy flowery sisters. When the women return from their labor, they raise their children and live a life they can never finish. Sisters picking fruits on the mountain and work in the field, at home sisters also spinning and weaving brocade and picking flowers and rust, they weave out of the cloth box can not be loaded, they weave out of the color brocade ah, than the sky's colorful clouds are more beautiful; they embroidered out of the flower, the bees and butterflies are flying to stay, but the seventy sisters always feel that there is a lack of what, the heart is always not happy, because they have reached the age of cardamom.
So the sisters invited each other to open a field, and they chose a place with plenty of water, and turned their minds to opening a field, and opened it, and opened it, and opened it, and opened it, and opened it, and opened it, and opened it, and opened it, and opened it, and opened it, and opened it, and opened it, and it was so big that you couldn't see it from this side of the field, and you couldn't see it from that side of the field. So they stocked a lot of fish in the field, the spring came, they sowed glutinous rice seeds in the field, the fall came, they hit the glutinous grain filled a warehouse and a warehouse, brewed a tank and a tank of glutinous rice wine. The sisters had everything they needed to eat, drink, and dress themselves, but they felt that something was missing, and they seldom sang or laughed.
The old people saw the sisters' thoughts, and came up with a good idea, suggesting that they can't finish eating the glutinous rice and drinking the glutinous rice wine to save it for the next year when the spring flowers bloomed, and then use the refined rice to make glutinous rice, and then go to the fields to catch the fish, shrimp, shells and snails to set up a feast, and greeted the young men from afar to come to the sisters to eat, drink and dance, and make friends and choose a spouse. The next year indeed through this form, some of the sister also chose the preferred couple and happily married out. Afterwards, the Sisters' Dinner has formed a specific festival.
3. According to legend, the Miao once lived in the far east. Later, due to population growth and difficulties in life and disasters and wars, they were forced to migrate to the west, and whenever they came to live in a place for a period of time, some of their sisters had to get married, and once again, the sisters who got married could not return home. It is difficult to see each other when it is hard to say goodbye, so they decided in the spring season, to the field to catch fish and shrimp, and invited the sisters have been married out of the sisters back and unmarried sisters to get together, eat a meal of sisters to tell each other their feelings, and then say goodbye to each other, and this phase of the annual Sisters' Day, as the saying goes, "Eat a meal of sisters, but a year of lovesickness".
Main Activities
The Miao Sisters Festival has a long history and has been passed down as a folklore, marriage and socialization. Eating Sisters' Rice is an important ceremonial matter of this festival. According to the local people, eating sister rice prevents moths from biting. Sister rice is also a token of affection given by the girls to their lovers, which is the most important symbol of the festival. One of the Sisterhood Rice activities is to go down to the fields to pick up fish and shrimp, where a girl from one village meets with a young man from another village to pick up fish and shrimp to talk about love and other customary activities, and to look for the person of their choice. Drum stepping is an important way for the whole community to participate in the festival. Girls dressed in their parents' elaborate costumes gather at the drumming ground to step on the drums, and from the drumming ground you can see whose costumes are colorful and whose silver jewelry is both beautiful and plentiful, which is a way for the Hmong to show their costume culture.
1. Shidong Sisters Festival
Shidong area to eat sister rice activities are very lively, every year in March of the lunar calendar, when the festival is approaching, near and far the Hmong villages are busy, ready to meet and participate in this annual grand festival. Shidong area every year in the lunar calendar March 13 to 16 Sisters Festival, the program is unchanged.
On the thirteenth day of the third month of the lunar calendar, the sisters of all villages go up to the mountains to collect leaves of flowers and plants, such as the leaves of the Southern Candlewood and the Sisters' Flower, and make glutinous rice in five colors: black, red, yellow, blue and white. In the morning of the 14th, the girls go to the fields to fish for shrimps (no matter whose field it is); in the morning, each of them brings a big bowl of colorful glutinous rice, two duck eggs (for frying shrimps), and some money (no matter how much it is) to buy ducks. Why only ducks and eggs but not chickens and eggs? Because ducks can cross the river, symbolizing that they can cross to the other side to be with their lovers. This is all ready, the girls of similar age are each concentrated to a family (preferably no boys or boys are very small family, which is good to receive boyfriends from abroad), and then the night there with men from abroad *** to eat sisterhood meal. After the meal, we meet in the village square or lane Lu to sing and talk about love, all night long.
The 15th to 17th of March is the official time of the festival and the climax of the bustle. During the day, the girls are dressed in beautiful dresses, wearing gorgeous silver jewelry, to Langxi (the name of the place, the Chinese translation of Yangjiaping) to watch the bullfighting, fighting birds; with their own together with the men to eat the sisterhood meal jumping Lusheng and jumping wood drum dance; night, and like the night of the 14th, men and women gathered in the village square or alleyway village singing and love.
At this time, the girls (divided into many batches of different ages) use bamboo baskets to carry their own colorful glutinous rice balls and gifts of fish, meat, duck eggs, etc., and present them to the men who have accompanied them for two days. In the coming year, these young men collectively raise money to buy gifts (embroidered silk threads, silk satin, etc.) in the bamboo baskets that the girls gave last year, and bring them back to the girls (called the return of the bamboo baskets). So after many times you and I, so that the mutual understanding of deepening, and then produce and confide in the love of love.
In the evening during the festival, men and women gather on the touring field to sing love songs and talk about love. Men to women to ask for sister rice, the girls in the sister rice hidden in the token to express the different feelings of the male side, open DaiPa, glutinous rice if there is a pair of red chopsticks, it is said that the girl would like to be paired up with a pair; if only one, it is by no means forgotten, but the girl politely hinted at the water lad do not want to vainly unrequited love; if the glutinous rice on the chili pepper onion and garlic, the young man should be interested to change the goal. To the immature love, the girls will put leaves or pine needles, suggesting that the request for silk or thread, to get such an object, the young man is not frustrated, we all understand that the red silk thread will ultimately be linked up what will be.
Festival, in addition to these activities, but also to hold drums, bullfighting, birdfighting, horse racing and other activities. At the end of the festival, when the young man has to go home, the sisters use bamboo baskets to contain multicolored glutinous rice, which hides love symbols such as pine needles, tsubaki sprouts and chili peppers, to give the man their hearts along with their love. Everything is in the unspoken, and everything is in the mysterious, as depicted in the Book of Songs: "The son of Zizhong, under the Brahmaputra, looks at you as if you were, and gives me a grip. Seeing you as such, I hold the pepper."
2. About the Sisters' Meal
Now, a few days before the Sisters' Day, the sisters go to the mountains and fields, and pick the leaves of the Southern Candlewood. Sisters tops, honey montana and other various colors of flowers and herbs, respectively, with cold water impregnated and boiled in water, to make black, red, yellow and green various kinds of flowers and herbs juice. Then use these juices to soak glutinous rice separately. One or two days later, these juices completely penetrate the glutinous rice, and then take out the separate filtration, and then rinse with water to the table hundred excess color juice, and then these separately soaked in a good color of glutinous rice mixing, on the retort steamed, it became a crystal bright fragrant colorful sister rice. This with a variety of wildflowers and grasses to take the color of the sister rice, not only colorful, fragrant and delicious, and long put inconvenience is not bad. Also has eyesight fitness, nourishing and strengthening effect, is the festival with friends and family **** enjoy with the gift of special food.
Festive tokens of symbolism
Sisters rice color symbolism: green symbolizes the hometown of the beautiful Qingshui River, red symbolizes the Walled City developed and prosperous, yellow symbolizes the harvest, purple and blue symbolizes the richness and prosperity, white symbolizes the purity of love.
The significance of the sisters' rice markers:
1. Hidden pine leaves: representing needles, suggesting that the later generations will return the girl's embroidery needles and floral threads.
2. Hanging bamboo hooks: implying that the umbrella reward, hanging a few hooks to send a few umbrellas, if you put two sets of bamboo hooks with each other, it is expressed the hope that in the future more to come with the girl.
3. Put the toon buds: said the girl would like to marry with the latter. Because of the Miao language called toon buds for "E", "Yang" means "lead" and "marry", the girl implied hope that the The girl hopes that the latter will come to marry her as soon as possible.
4. Cotton: It implies that the girls miss their offspring. Because the Miao language called cotton for "bear", and the Miao language "miss" agree, so to imply that the feelings of longing.
5. Put coriander Xi dishes: the meaning and implication of the same as spring sprouts, because the Miao language called this dish "E Yang Xi", "Yang" meaning and the same as above.
6. Cotton and coriander are put on the table to show the eagerness to get married.
7. Hanging a live duck: it is hoped that a piglet will be given back to the girl to raise for the next year's sisterhood dinner, killing it for everyone to eat and rejoin in the festivities.
5. Putting chili or garlic: It implies that the girl does not want to come back to each other in the future, or that they are no longer friends with each other.
Inheritance value
The Miao Sisters Festival truly shows the custom of women taking charge of political, economic and cultural power and ruling all social affairs, as well as the scene of men and women's love life in the process of the social change from matrilineal to patrilineal clan. In the meantime, the ancient and long-lasting art of Miao singing and dancing costumes, the fierce and thrilling entertainment of dragon dance and bullfighting, and the peaceful and cozy farm life intertwined with the pursuit of back-to-basics modern tourism activities are a great spectacle of the evolution of humanities and ecological process. The Sisters Festival is also a stage for people in the community to visit friends and relatives, culture and entertainment, and social interaction, and is a bond that unites people and strengthens unity within the nation.