Uygur New Year Customs (2)

Uighurs divide a day into six shifts: sunrise, noon, sunset, starlight, midnight and dawn. The ceremony of Nowruz Festival begins at dawn on the first day of the new year. Men, women and children wear national costumes. Parents burn a pile of pine and cypress branches in the middle of the house, wrap the smoking branches around everyone's head, and wish their families peace and happiness in the new year. Then the parents took the smoking pine branches to the door of the barn to make the herd smoke. After sunrise, every household began to cook "Nuoluzimi", using surplus grain and grain, plus various condiments, and boiled it into thick porridge, which is called "Keque" in Uygur language. From noon that day, people began to pay New Year greetings to each other in droves. After sunset, we treat each other to dinner, and men, women and children sing and dance to express the joy of the New Year.

After the Nowruz Festival, spring ploughing in rural areas began, just like the melting of ice and snow, the greening of vegetation, the revival of the earth and the calving of livestock. While celebrating the festival, the herdsmen counted the livestock that had passed the winter safely and prepared to start grazing on the grassland. With the transformation of animal husbandry to agriculture, settlements and towns, the traditional New Year festivals and customs in Uygur agricultural and pastoral areas still continue most of the traditional styles, but changes have taken place in other areas.