In March of Yangchun, Tanhua Mountain in Dayao County, Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture is already full of mountain flowers, lantana, camellia, and azaleas are all over the mountain, decorating the vast mountains. The Yi people living in Tanhua Township poured their understanding of beauty into the red and bright lantana flowers all over the mountain.
After leaving Dayao County, I went up the mountain all the way. The altitude here is nearly 3,000 meters, and the temperature gradually cools down. It feels like autumn, and it is like late autumn. But the festive atmosphere is very strong, and you can see fiery red horse cherry blossoms everywhere, in fact, some of them are embroidered on the dresses of Yi women.
Tanhua Township is located in the north of Dayao County, Chuxiong Prefecture, Yunnan Province, 45 kilometers away from the county seat, with less than 10,000 people in the township. The Tanhua Mountain where Tanhua Township is located is densely forested, full of exotic flowers and plants, and the horse cherry blossoms can be called a must. This horse cherry blossom has a unique wild beauty, which is really different. Perhaps the words "flowers like silk, color like blood, and big like a bucket" can express its beauty.
There are clusters of rhododendrons all over the mountains and plains, which are as red as burning fire. The huge flowers sway proudly on the unattainable branches of the thousand-year-old horse cherry tree. Only the beautiful Tanhua landscape can grow such an unforgettable horse cherry blossom.
The legend of the Flower Arranging Festival is to commemorate a Yi girl named "Miyilu". In folklore, she is the incarnation of love and beauty, or a heroine who defies violence and dedicates herself bravely. Every year on the eighth day of the second month of the lunar calendar, people of the Yi ethnic group will wear Yi ethnic costumes to celebrate the Flower Arrangement Festival at Tanhua Mountain, commemorating this hardworking, beautiful, kind and brave girl in the form of flower arrangement.
Every year on this day, people pick off the fiery red horse cherry blossoms, insert them on the door, tie them to the horns of cattle and sheep and around the house, symbolizing auspiciousness and happiness. Colored sheds are set up on some main passages of the cottage, and flowers are placed on them, making the whole Yijia cottage like a world of flowers. Men, women and children form a circle to "dance", and young people talk about love. This is a folk festival full of romance.
Those exquisitely embroidered horse cherry blossoms fully expose the beauty-loving heart of Yi women. There are even fiery red flowers on the man's satchel. People dressed in festive costumes gathered in Tanhua Mountain to sing and dance, hold flower sacrifice activities, and put horse cherry blossoms on each other, expressing good wishes and praying for a prosperous life.
At this time, the bimos made a grand appearance and recited scriptures for the beautiful girls. Also choose the most beautiful girl to be this year's horse cherry blossom messenger. In retrospect, what you see most at the Tanhua Flower Arrangement Festival is not the horse cherry blossoms blooming in the mountains and fields, but the beautiful and affectionate Yi women, and the horse cherry blossoms blooming on their dresses.
They use their skillful hands to keep the spring on their bodies. Here, for the first time, I saw the rich and varied costumes of Yi women. Dozens of clothes gather together in one place, which is the feeling of a hundred flowers blooming. And it will not be mistaken for the clothing of other nationalities.
On the day of the Flower Arranging Festival, every family has to kill chickens and sheep, pound glutinous rice, make buckwheat cakes, and eat them with honey. Each family invites guests to drink and share friendship. At night, piles of bonfires are lit in villages and on hillsides. With the sound of joyful reeds, people begin to dance and sing. Young men and women sing and dance around the bonfire hand in hand.
Flower Arranging Festival is also a day for young people to date and talk about love. Unmarried young men and women of the Yi nationality take this opportunity to dance lightly by the bonfire, showing off their elegant dancing postures to attract each other. If both parties are interested, they will send a bouquet of horse cherry blossoms picked by themselves, which will be regarded as a promise of love. From time to time, you will see a girl withdrawing, and then a young man also retreating quietly. This is the lovers going to a tryst in the dense forest on the hillside.
The Flower Arranging Festival is usually held for 3 days. Meet with friends, blow suona, lusheng, yueqin, flute, men and women, old and young, here and there, happily dance "left foot dance". In the woods, on the side of the hillside, and beside the road, you can see scenes of Yi people holding hands and singing to their heart's content everywhere, dancing from early morning to late night, from dusk to dawn.