As a Han Chinese born and raised in Xishuangbanna (actually considered a minority in the local area), the Water Festival (i.e., the Dai New Year, the grandest festival of the year for the Dai, just like the Spring Festival for the Han Chinese) has always been the most awaited event of the year. Since I can remember, I have been celebrating the Water Festival. Since then, I have been looking forward to the Water Festival even more than the Spring Festival. Because, although there are good food and clothes in the Spring Festival, they always stay at home, which makes people bored after a long time. And over the Water Festival, in addition to being able to enjoy, happy splashing carnival, but also to the Dai walled village near to catch pendulum, buy a variety of Dai snacks, see the Dai people perform a variety of traditional songs and dances, watch the fun, grab from the blue sky under the falling Gao Sheng (Dai homemade soil rockets), the mood is really excited, excited!
This is how the Water Festival has been celebrated for decades. Although the local Han Chinese in the Spring Festival also firecrackers, fireworks, other ethnic groups in the state also have their own festivals, but the Water Festival has always been the most grand and lively festival in Xishuangbanna. Of course, with the accelerated pace of the information society into which we have entered, the trend of communication and integration among various ethnic groups is becoming more and more obvious, and the form of the Water Splashing Festival has slightly changed, but as a national festival, it has always been inherited from the traditional things, showing the iconic difference between the Dai ethnic group and other ethnic groups. This difference is something in the blood, but also dependent on or attached to the environment they live in and inherited culture, and not a government, some kind of action can change.
Contrasting my experience of the Chinese New Year and the Water Festival over the past 30 years, the two festivals reflect the characteristics of two peoples. The Spring Festival is relatively more personal, or private, and its festivities are confined within the family, while the Water Splashing Festival is a more communal festival, with a much broader scope, or at least a group activity in a particular walled village. For the Han Chinese, the theme and content of the Spring Festival is nothing more than a family reunion, filial piety and respect for elders, etc.; for the Dai, in addition to the traditional significance of the Water Splashing Festival, there is a more profound meaning: thousands of years has been in the disadvantaged ethnic groups such as the Dai ethnic minorities, the founding of New China, the realization of equality between the various ethnic groups, the formation of the inferiority complex over the long term has changed a lot, so that they are these ethnic minorities, the disadvantaged, can also raise their eyebrows. Can also raise eyebrows, born as an ethnic minority can also be equal with the Han and other strong ethnic pride. The festivals of their own ethnic groups have rightly become an important vehicle for them to display their own traditions and gain the respect and recognition of other ethnic groups.