Torch Festival Handwritten Newspaper

Torch Festival is a traditional festival of Yi, Bai, Naxi, Jinuo, Lahu and other ethnic groups, which has profound folk culture connotation and is called "Carnival of the East". Different ethnic groups hold Torch Festivals at different times, mostly on June 24th of the lunar calendar. The main activities are bullfighting, goat shooting, cockfighting, horse racing, wrestling, song and dance performances, beauty contests and so on. In the new era, the Torch Festival has been endowed with new folk functions and produced new forms.

In July of 20021year, the torch festival in Xide and Zhaojue counties of Liangshan was cancelled for various reasons.

The origin of Torch Festival:

The torch festival legends of various ethnic groups in Yunnan have their own characteristics. The proverbs of Naxi people about the legend of Torch Festival preserve important information about the origin of Torch Festival, which, together with the records in Yuxi Annals, Luquan Annals and Tunxi Annals, provide important clues for exploring the origin of Torch Festival. Although the legends about the Torch Festival in Dali and Kunming hide the origin of the Torch Festival, their "Chinese Valentine's Day" also reveals the origin of the Torch Festival and its profound culture.

The moral of Torch Festival:

The formation of the customs and legends of the Torch Festival is related to the primitive worship of all ethnic groups in the Yi language, especially the belief in fire. In the Torch Festival activities of Yi ethnic groups in southwest China, the folk functions of fumigating fields with fire, exorcising evil spirits, killing insects, protecting seedlings, urging seedlings, praying for blessings, attracting light and welcoming Fu Rui are still maintained, among which the folk psychology and belief concept are to seek good fortune and avoid evil. The legend of the Torch Festival of Liangshan Yi nationality reflects the worship of fire, a supernatural force with mysterious factors, in primitive society, and still embodies the original ecological folklore genes of the torch festival customs and legends. It belongs to the early form of torch festival custom, and its cultural core is fire worship, which is in the same strain as the cultural tradition of Yi people worshiping fire in the border strong system.

There are many variations in the legend of Torch Festival. Although the sources are different, they are all similar. The text structure of the story follows the narrative procedure of struggle between man and God → man conquers God → God retaliates → man conquers God again → celebrates victory and gains a bumper harvest. These different texts all have strong humanistic spirit, and they all end in declaring the victory of man and the failure of God, which is different from the narrative mode dominated by God in mythology. With the development of society, the change of history, the shift of the core problem of human existence (from nature to society) and the intensification of class social conflicts, the legend of Torch Festival is closely intertwined with the vast and complicated social life of all ethnic groups, and then becomes an oral narrative way to express ethnic contradictions and class contradictions. This kind of legend is a secondary torch festival custom legend with the theme of praising ancestors and heroes.