Traditional Customs of Dawei Festival

Three or four days before the Dawei Festival, the water family, like the Han Chinese to welcome the New Year in general, began to sweep the court, cleaning, and will be scattered in the rice paddies (the water family believes that the sun dust can kill insects). C for the end of the year Eve, this day to seriously clean the house and dam, for the sacrifice of God's ancestors on the fish, meat, wine, rice and other offerings, and to prepare a sumptuous meal to entertain guests. At this time where the d festival villages, will beat up the copper drums, drums, or sing a burst of song, into the night more than.

Mao Day is the climax of the festival. The first day of the new year of the dao prevails to catch the dao slope young men and women singing the custom of the song. Dobo is selected after many years of custom, specializing in young men and women to sing songs in the form of extensive social activities. It is usually held on the top of a flat slope that is wide enough to accommodate tens of thousands of people. At that time, not only over the d festival village village young people to go on the slope of the d song, that is, not the d festival outside the cottage and neighboring counties of men, women and children will also come to participate in the event. Some businessmen also want to come to set up stalls, selling a variety of food and daily groceries, suddenly will make the whole slope of the daughters of the crowd, bustling. Before the start of the song, first by a respected old man publicly announced the song on the precepts: only unmarried young men and women can participate in the song. And wishing the singing students can find their sweethearts in the singing. So, in a shouting and laughing sound, young men and women in groups of three to five each looking for their own singing rivals, in the bushes of Mopo, on the grass, beside the rocks, either standing or sitting with various colors of umbrellas covering their faces and singing songs.

The festival is to facilitate the marriage of young men and women days, in the past, the water tribe by the feudal rites of bondage deeper, usually the social activities of young men and women are subject to certain restrictions, even if the private object of love, but also can not be free to come and go. Only when necessary, to their own acquaintances, such as sisters at home to secretly pass a certain message of love. And in the d festival this day of song is not subject to such restrictions, young men and women are free to choose their favorite person to sing. As long as the two sing in good faith, as long as the man's family with a pig, wine, glutinous rice and other gifts to recognize relatives, choose a good wedding date can be married, the general family rarely interfere.

On the eve of the festival, families laughed loudly and clinked glasses. Clanging brass drums and thick leather drums resonate through the water village. Water family members drink fragrant glutinous rice wine and sing the "auntie song", which is more fragrant than rice wine. Each water tribe village has a "song hall", female singers and accompanying girls sitting in the room, male singers and companions, the audience sitting in the hall room, singing for days, even for several days and nights.

In the water tribe, there is a traditional distinction between "over the end but the d, over the d but the end". The villages that celebrate the "D Festival" take the d day of September or October (the fifth or sixth month of the lunar calendar) as a New Year's festival, called "Borrowing the D", meaning "Eating the D". According to the clan rules of the Water Tribe, any village that celebrates the Duan Festival will not celebrate the Duan Festival, and those who celebrate the Duan Festival will not celebrate the Duan Festival.