Miao Minority Lusheng Festival

The Lusheng Festival in Kaili, Guizhou is the most famous and grand of the bunch. It begins on the 16th day of the first lunar month, and climaxes on the 19th and 20th days .The festival features a lot of Miao ethnic activities, such as singing, bullfighting, horse racing, and dancing to the rhythm of the Lusheng.

Lusheng is a kind of bamboo pipe. It plays an important role in Miao culture. The Lusheng festival is one of important festivals in this region, because it is related to mothers. Local people often say, “We could hear our mum's voice and songs when we are playing this music instrument.”

The playing of Lusheng is very strict. Old people say that it cannot be played after rice planting time or before the rice harvest. They think that the Lusheng playing might blow away the rice flowers if people play it at the time, which will lead to a bad harvest. They hold this festival to show gratitude to their ancestors' spirits, gods of nature and pray for a good harvest in the coming year.

In the festival, farmers only eat new rice and cook sticky rice. Some families will make sticky rice cakes or steamed sticky rice covered by bamboo leaves. Hosts and their relatives drink rice wine for 3 days in the morning and in the evening. They also make a red point on the relatives' foreheads when each of them finish a bowl of rice wine. The red point symbolizes good luck, so some people have more than 8 red points. The local farmers do not attend the festival unless they have finished their lunch, and drunk a lot of rice wine. After lunch, many women wear traditional clothes, silver ornaments, carry their babies on their backs, and then walk to the dancing square in the mountain.

At the lusheng Festival, hundreds of the lusheng (bamboo-pipe instruments) in dozens of groups are simultaneously played and the music is reverberating far and wide. Hundreds and thousands of the Miao girls wearing silver-decorated clothes and head ornaments are dancing together to the rhythms, forming one circle after another together on the lusheng playing ground, and appearing a silver swirling sea.

The Festival is both an exhibition of prosperity and a competition of skill and wisdom, Playing the Lusheng music and performing the Lusheng dance are an important part of many Miao festivals. Additionally, it is also a good time for the unmarried people in the village to get to know each other and become marriage partners. Boys try to play lusheng well and girls dance in their colorful and traditional costumes to the boys' music. During the Lusheng Festival, people can enjoy other activities, such as bullfight, basketball match, tug of war, mountain-climbing, race, chess-playing, etc.