The Three Major Festivals of the Dai People

The three major festivals of the Dai people: the Water Splashing Festival, the Door Closing Festival and the Door Opening Festival.

1. Water Splashing Festival

Every year around the Ching Ming Festival, in the middle of June of the Dai calendar, the Dai people use three kinds of percussion instruments, namely, elephant-footed drums, cymbals, and sharp-pointed gongs, to beat out distant and shocking music, announcing that the Dai New Year has come.

During the Water Splashing Festival, bands open the way and Dai people in full costume walk around villages and villages to pay their respects and congratulate each other. If you are a head of the neighborhood, respected families, regardless of Dai, Han and other ethnic groups, the Buddha will also deliberately lead the Buddhist disciples to pay homage to the New Year, and around the table you have prepared to sing and dance, the Buddha will also gently with his hand on your forehead, at this time, you have to half crouch down the body, the Buddha will be for you to chant for you, for your blessings.

2, shut the door festival

The Dai people believe in the southern part of the Zen Buddhism, every year on September 15 of the Dai calendar, the Han Chinese lunar calendar in mid-July, the Dai people think the Buddha to leave the earth to the Western sky preaching, they began to consciously give up recreational activities, "shut the door" to live, shut the door to the festival lasted for three months. The festival is particularly long, and there are also many taboos and instructions.

3, Open Door Festival

December 15 of the Dai calendar, the Han Chinese lunar calendar in mid-September, the old man placed in the back of the Buddha's seat to take away the baggage, burned with fire, said the Buddha to return to the sixteenth day of the whole family of men, women and children and then go to the Buddhist temple to worship Buddha. Dai December 17, the Dai people believe that the Buddha in the western sky preaching for three months, in this day officially returned to earth, the villages and cottages banging gongs and drums, held a grand "catching the pendulum" activities to meet the Buddha, but also in the Buddhist temple to the Buddha to repent for a year's sins.

Daily Food Customs of the Dai People

The Dai people eat rice as their staple food, and the Dai people in Dehong eat round-grained rice and glutinous rice. Generally eat two meals a day, all the time glutinous rice, accustomed to eat rice with a hand pinch. Do not eat overnight food, now pounded now eat. Good at eating in the field, with banana leaves or bamboo lunch box to hold a ball of glutinous rice, with salt, chili, sour meat, roast chicken, mumble, moss pine can eat. The edible oil made from the yaojia fruit is consumed all year round. The name of the fruit is oil gourd, because it tastes like lard, so it is also called oil dregs fruit. In the Dai recipe, to "spread" (raw) as the first.

There are many kinds of "Sa", including raw pork, raw beef, raw venison, raw fish, raw ants' eggs, raw turtledove meat, raw chrysalids, raw bee pupae, and so on. Among them, the most famous is "Sardaru", which is also known as pig's raw meat. It is made of pork spine or lean meat chopped finely with pig's liver, together with sour rice vinegar and salt, and when the meat turns from red to white after marination, together with finely chopped fennel, green peppercorns, ginger, garlic, wild greens and other condiments, mixed well and added with beef and pork. After mixing well with beef and pork bubble fried skin and rice noodles, eat with fried crispy pig stomach, pig head skin, pig arched mouth for dipping, the flavor is excellent.