The customs and habits of Miao nationality

Miao nationality is one of the oldest ethnic groups in China, with a large population and wide distribution, and Xiangxi Miao nationality is one of them. In the long-term historical development, Miao people have formed their own unique customs and habits in clothing, festivals, marriage, funeral, entertainment, etiquette, taboos and diet.

Holiday customs:

There are many festivals and large-scale activities for Miao people in Xiangxi. Among them, the most representative are:

1. Catch up with last year. On the first month of the lunar calendar, the Miao people in Xiangxi are most keen to catch up with the New Year's Fair, and the date is decided by each place. On that day, men, women and children, dressed in festive costumes, invited each other and chased them in droves. The annual market is full of people, bustling and lively. People can not only exchange materials, but also participate in or watch activities such as swinging, lion dancing, playing with dragon lanterns and climbing ladders. Young men and women also make more use of this opportunity to find lovers and have sex.

2. March 3rd. This is the traditional song and dance festival of Miao nationality in western Hunan. On this day, Miao people automatically gathered in the appointed singing venue to participate in singing dialogue, listening to songs, dancing and watching dances, and had a good time.

3. catch up with Qingming. This is a large-scale song meeting unique to Miao people in western Hunan, also known as "Qingming Song Meeting". According to legend, because Miao people live in remote forests, all their daily necessities have to be exchanged in remote Han areas, and they are often deceived. Therefore, the Miao people agreed to take Tomb-Sweeping Day as their venue, exchange materials with each other and meet their relatives and friends. In this way, over time, today's "Qingming Song Festival" was formed.

Tomb-Sweeping Day has a traditional central venue. The Miao people in the east of Jishou catch up with Tomb-Sweeping Day, and its center venue is on the Danqing Tomb-Sweeping Day every year. At that time, Miao singers will sing with their hands on their cheeks, and you will sing and I will come on stage, beaming. Some sang until it was dark and refused to finish the meeting, singing all night.

4. Look at the Dragon Field. Every year, from the day of Grain Rain in the third month of the lunar calendar, we watch Dragon El every day, which used to be called Dragon Watching Day, and then we watch the invasion of Japan every day. Men, women and children take a day off and take an active part. If you do farm work on this day, it is a taboo. Therefore, Miao people attach great importance to "dragon watching".

Clothing customs:

There are more than 200 kinds of Miao costumes in Qiandongnan Prefecture, which is the most diverse and well-preserved area in China and even in the world, and is called "Miao Costume Museum". On the whole, Miao costumes have maintained the traditional weaving, embroidery, picking and dyeing techniques in China. While using one main technique, they often use other techniques, either picking embroidery, dyeing embroidery or ribbon embroidery, thus making these costumes colorful and showing distinctive national artistic characteristics. From the content point of view, clothing patterns are mostly based on various life images in daily life, which plays an important role in expressing meaning, identifying nationalities, branches and languages. These video records are called "epic worn on the body" by experts and scholars. From the modeling point of view, China's traditional line drawing or approximate line drawing modeling technique with single line as the outline of the pattern is adopted. From the perspective of production techniques, the five forms of weaving, sewing, splicing and cutting in the history of costume development are all examples in Qiandongnan Miao costumes, with distinct historical levels, which can be called the exhibition hall of costume production history. From the color point of view, they are good at choosing all kinds of contrasting colors, and strive to pursue the richness of colors, generally red, black, white, yellow and blue. From the composition point of view, it does not emphasize the prominent theme, but only pays attention to the requirements of the overall sense of clothing. Formally, it can be divided into formal clothes and casual clothes. Dress-up is a kind of costume used for holiday etiquette and wedding. It is complex and gorgeous, which reflects the artistic level of Miao costumes. Casual clothes, the style is quieter and simpler than formal clothes, with less materials and less labor, suitable for daily wear. Besides formal and casual clothes, Miao costumes are different in age and region.

This is also the reason why Miao costumes are encyclopedias worn on the body.

Miao girls like to wear pleated skirts. There are more than 500 pleats on a skirt, with many layers, some as many as thirty or forty layers. These skirts, from weaving, dyeing, sewing to final drawing and embroidery, were all done by the girls themselves. Coupled with hand embroidered belt and flower chest pocket, it is really colorful and beautiful.

When it comes to "clothing", we have to think of "decoration".

The headdress includes a silver horn, a silver fan, a silver hat, a silver handkerchief, a silver floating head row, a silver hairpin, a silver pin, a silver crown flower, a silver net chain, a silver comb, silver earrings and a silver children's hat.

If the well-dressed Miao girls get together, it will definitely become a beautiful silver world. It is the nature of Miao girls to like to wear silver ornaments. They put them in a bun on their heads, about 20 cm high, and made exquisite silver crowns. There are six silver wings of different heights in front of the crown, with dragon playing with pearls, butterfly exploring flowers, phoenix rising in the sun, birds flying to the phoenix and fish swimming in the water. In some areas, in addition to silver pieces, silver horns with a height of about 1 m are inserted into the silver crown, and the tips of the horns float in color, which makes them more noble and rich. There is a silver ribbon at the lower edge of the silver crown, and a row of small silver pendants hang down. The silver collar worn around the neck has several layers, mostly made of silver pieces and small silver rings. Wearing a silver lock and a silver collar on his chest, wearing a silver cloak on his chest and back, and hanging many small silver bells. Earrings and bracelets are all made of silver. Only the two sleeves are embroidered with lux as the main tone, but the cuffs are also inlaid with a wide circle of silver ornaments. The costumes of Miao girls often weigh several kilograms, and some have been accumulated and passed down by generations. Known as "a fairy dressed in strange clothes and wrapped in white." The craftsmanship of Miao silver ornaments is gorgeous, exquisite and ingenious, which fully shows the wisdom and talent of Miao people.

Religious customs:

Miao people used to believe in animism, worship nature and worship their ancestors. Tibetan calendar festival is the biggest sacrifice activity of Miao nationality. Generally, a small sacrifice lasts for seven years and a big sacrifice lasts for thirteen years. It will be held on the first day of October to November of the lunar calendar, when a roe deer cow will be killed and a Lusheng dance will be performed to sacrifice its ancestors. Invite friends and relatives to get together during meals to enhance feelings and family harmony.

The main beliefs of Miao nationality are primitive religious forms such as nature worship, totem worship and ancestor worship. Traditional Miao society is superstitious about ghosts and gods, and witchcraft prevails. Some Miao people also believe in Christianity and Catholicism. Few Miao people believe in Buddhism and Taoism.

Traditionally, Miao people often regard some giant or strange natural objects as spiritual manifestations, so they worship them and offer sacrifices to them. Among them, the typical objects of nature worship are boulders (strange rocks), caves, trees and mountains. In addition, Miao people think that some natural phenomena or objects are gods or ghosts, and Miao language often does not distinguish between ghosts and gods, or uses both words. In most cases, ghosts are regarded as abandoned or wronged souls and tools, which often bring disasters, diseases, plagues or other misfortunes to mankind. For example, the so-called oriental ghosts, western ghosts, sow ghosts, cannibals and tiger ghosts are called evil ghosts. Natural phenomena with spirituality are often regarded as good ghosts and have certain divinity, such as mountain gods, valley gods, cotton gods, wind gods, Raytheon, rain gods, sun gods and moon gods. Miao people worship good ghosts and evil ghosts in different ways. Good ghosts are greeted by courtesy and sacrificed sincerely. Evil spirits must be bribed and cajoled until they are driven away.

In many areas, Miao people also believe that there are many monsters in nature. For example, cows put shit on their bodies or spin around in the stables, trample the shit in circles, pigs eat piglets or lie in the trough, ducks eat duck eggs, tigers enter the arena, meet two snakes, and hens crow cocks.

In some Miao areas, artificial objects worship land bodhisattvas, land milk, family gods, sacrificial bridges, wells and so on. The Miao language of the Land Goddess and Bodhisattva is called Land Ghost, which is generally composed of several stones. Land houses are mostly made of wood or three stone slabs, which are extremely simple and located at the intersection next to the village or the pedestrian rest place on the roadside. The belief in family gods exists in some Miao people in Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan dialects, that is, setting up "family gods" idols at home. Sacrificial bridges are popular in most parts of southeastern Guizhou. Dragon is also the object of worship and sacrifice by Miao people everywhere.

Totem worship. Many Miao and Yao people in the east worship Pan Hu (a kind of god dog). They have been told the story of "Goddess, Mother, Dog Dad" for generations, and regarded Pan Hu as their ancestor. Some Miao people in the central region think that their ancestor Jiang Yang originated from the heart of maple, so they regard maple as a totem. In other areas, the Miao people worship buffalo and bamboo as totem objects.

Generally speaking, ancestor worship plays a very important role in Miao society. They believe that although their ancestors died, their souls will always be with their children and grandchildren, and they will be worshipped with wine and meat on festivals, even in their daily diet. In many areas, ancestor worship ceremonies are held regularly or irregularly. There are "beating pig sticks" and "beating cattle to worship ancestors" in western Hunan, "eating shit" in southeastern Guizhou, "knocking Balang" in central Guizhou, and the custom of beating old cattle in northwestern Guizhou and northeastern Yunnan. Among them, the phenomenon of eating dirty meat is still prevalent in Qiandongnan Prefecture, which is the most typical. Eating dirty is also called drum festival, drum club festival and drum storage festival, which is held every seven or thirteen years with the clan (drum club) as the unit. They believe that the ancestors' souls live in wooden drums, and the sacrificial drum is to tap the wooden drum to summon the ancestors' souls to enjoy the sacrifices of future generations. Priests are called dirty heads, and the sacrificed dirty cows are specially raised for this purpose. Each sacrificial activity lasts for three years.

Most Miao people believe in witchcraft. The main witchcraft activities are yin-crossing, divination, divine judgment and offering sacrifices to ghosts. In addition to magic. Witchcraft activities are presided over by wizards. Wizards are mostly unprofessional. They play the role of hosts in the above-mentioned primary worship and witchcraft activities, and some local wizards also serve as village elders. In addition to being familiar with the ways of offering sacrifices, wizards can mostly tell the genealogy of their clan, major historical events of their nation and the route of migration sources, and are familiar with all kinds of myths and legends, ancient songs and folk stories. Some wizards also have the functions of singers and dancers. Therefore, wizards are important inheritors of Miao traditional culture and play the role of intellectuals in Miao society. In addition, wizards also have certain medical skills and know some herbs. While exorcising ghosts, it is supplemented by scientific medical means.

Eating habits:

In most areas, Miao people have three meals a day, and rice is the staple food. Fried Baba is the most common fried food. If you add some fresh meat and sauerkraut as stuffing, the taste will be more delicious. Most meat comes from livestock and poultry farming. Miao people in Sichuan and Yunnan all like to eat dog meat, and there is a saying that "Miao's dog is Yi's wine". In addition to animal oil, Miao people's edible oils are mostly tea oil and vegetable oil. Pepper is the main condiment, and in some areas there is even a saying that it is inseparable from pepper. There are many kinds of Miao vegetables. Common vegetables are beans, melons, greens and radishes. Most Miao people are good at making bean products. Miao people everywhere generally like to eat sauerkraut, and sour soup is a must for every family. Sour soup is rice soup or tofu water, fermented in a crock for 3-5 days, and then used to cook fish and vegetables. The food preservation of Miao people generally adopts pickling method, and vegetables, chickens, ducks and fish like to be pickled into sour taste. Almost every Miao family has a jar for curing food, which is collectively called a sour jar. Miao nationality has a long history of brewing, and has a set of techniques from koji making, fermentation, distillation, blending and cellar storage. Camellia oleifera is the most common daily drink. Miao people in Xiangxi also specially made a kind of scented tea. Sour soup is also a common drink. Typical foods mainly include: blood soup, Chili bone, Miaoxiang Guifeng soup, cotton vegetable cake, insect tea, scented tea, fish paste, sour soup fish and so on.

Wedding and funeral customs:

Zhao lang

Zhaolang is mainly popular in Chengbu Miao Autonomous County and the border area between Hunan and Guangxi, with Chengbu Miao being the most popular. Miao women in mountainous areas enjoy a high status. Generally, they don't get married outside, but stay at home to "find a husband". Families without children and daughters often have to "take" a daughter. When I grow up, I will "invite men to the door" to continue my family and let men get married. It's called "recruiting lang" After the introduction of "Zhaolang", the female elders called it a son and nephew, avoiding calling it a son-in-law and nephew. Call each other brothers and avoid calling each other brothers; Young students are called uncles, not uncles.

Colored glutinous rice is also an essential food for young men and women to fall in love and get married. Miao people in Chengbu, Hunan Province gave each other glutinous rice cakes painted with mandarin ducks as souvenirs. When the wedding is held, the bride and groom will raise their glasses to propose a toast, and the person in charge of the wedding will also invite the bride and groom to eat glutinous rice cakes painted with dragons, phoenixes and dolls.

funeral

Miao people in Guizhou have well-preserved hanging coffins and cave coffins. It is said that this move is to facilitate Miao descendants to bring their dead ancestors back to their homeland when they return to the Central Plains.

Miao taboo:

Maternity taboo: pregnant women give birth and avoid outsiders. The wrong person should wash his feet and drink a bowl of cold water when going out to prevent the maternal milk from being "trampled dry". Maternal avoid eating old beef, pork, pheasant, small fish, vegetables, peppers and so on. In some Miao areas, it is forbidden for pregnant women to meet pregnant women or go to other delivery rooms, otherwise the delivery period will be prolonged.

Farming taboo: Miao people send manure back to the fields for the first time every year, and it is forbidden to meet outsiders. If they meet, they are forbidden to say hello. When planting seedlings, if you see fish in the Miao Di, don't say fish, or the fish will eat the roots of the seedlings. When some villages harvest millet, the ears are small and they are not harvested. If the children ask, don't say "no", say "they haven't grown up yet", otherwise Xiaomi will refuse to grow any longer because of his sadness. Don't mention mice in Tanaka, for fear of hearing them destroy crops, you can only call them "their father and son" instead. Avoid May Day. After the first month in beginning of spring, avoid breaking ground and carrying water on May Day.

Funeral taboo: In some Miao areas, male death is forbidden during the day and female death is forbidden at night. Think that the time is wrong, the deceased must be accompanied by another opposite sex. Therefore, he was unwell when he died. When he lost his family, he often asked the wizard to say "change" and make a palm-sized wooden coffin to be buried with him, indicating that he had a companion. Avoid putting non-silver metals such as iron and copper, cotton and things coated with tung oil in the coffin, thinking that the deceased can't buy water to drink on the way back to the East, and iron and copper will toss talents to death. In some Miao areas, on the Day of the Dead in the village, you can go to work, but don't go to work in the fields. On that day, people in the same village should avoid collecting firewood and go home, otherwise the firewood collectors will have disaster. During the suspension of classes, family members are forbidden to eat vegetables. After burial 1 month, nothing in the house may be sold or borrowed.

Taboo of living customs: In some Miao areas, it is forbidden to wash and drink rice retort, rice bag and rice basin at any time, only when eating new rice, to show that the old rice is removed and the new rice is welcomed. Washing at any time will wash away the family wealth and there is not enough food. Drinking raw water in the mountains should not be directly drunk. You must mark the grass first to show that you are killing sick ghosts. Don't touch other people's clothes on the roadside, so as not to catch leprosy. Avoid children playing with small bows and arrows at home for fear of shooting their ancestors. Avoid crossing the child's head, or the child will not grow tall. It is forbidden for women to sit on a bench with their elders.