The New Year is one of the most important festivals of the year. When it comes to the New Year, many people immediately think of the first day of the Lunar New Year. After all, after working for a whole year, it is really a blessing to be able to enjoy a seven-day holiday and reunite with your family. A memorable thing. However, the New Year is not the only day. Different ethnic minorities have their own calendars and use different dates for their own New Year, and the Miao nationality is no exception.
Qianhu Village, the largest Miao settlement in the world
When it comes to the Miao nationality, I believe that most people are familiar with it. This ancient nation is said to be the descendant of Chiyou. After thousands of years of development, it has a population of nearly ten million, ranking fourth among the 55 ethnic minorities in my country. They are widely distributed in Guizhou, Hunan, Hubei, Sichuan and other provinces in China. After the Ming and Qing Dynasties, some Miao people migrated to Southeast Asia, Thailand, Laos and other countries, and migrated to Europe and the United States to spread all over the world. However, the largest Miao village in the world is in Guizhou : More than a dozen Miao villages are connected together, which is very spectacular. This is Xijiang Qianhu Miao Village located in Leishan County, Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture.
Entering the gate, high mountains and flowing water and twelve wine barriers
There are many ways to go to Xijiang Qianhu Miao Village. You can choose to take the high-speed rail to Kaili South Station, then change to a bus or rent to Miao Village. However, the most convenient way is to drive by yourself. You can drive directly to the entrance of the scenic spot. It is by car. As soon as we arrived at the gate of the scenic spot, the "welcome battle" of the Miao nationality was already set up. The Miao girls were already dressed in traditional costumes and lined up in a V shape. Everyone held wine pots in their hands and sang the songs of the Miao nationality. , This is the unique "high mountains and flowing water" of the Miao family.
As the so-called high mountains and flowing water meet bosom friends, this is not only a natural phenomenon of water flowing downhill, but also has cultural allusions from the Boyazi period. The high mountains and flowing water in the welcome ceremony of the Miao family also have the same effect. The wine was poured in front until the first person held a bowl with both hands and fed it to the tourists. In the melodious Miao song, he drank the welcome wine of the Miao nationality and accepted the purest blessing of the Miao nationality. Tourists who have drunk the wine of high mountains and flowing water can also receive a small horn cup pendant as a souvenir.
Miao people love wine, so wine has become a good product for Miao people to receive relatives and friends, and it is also a must-have for welcoming distinguished guests. Don’t think that the test is over after passing the "high mountains and flowing water", but in fact this is just the beginning. After "High Mountains and Flowing Water", there are twelve wines waiting for everyone. Each course of bar wine will be placed on a square table, and two horn cups will be placed on it with rattan blue characters, which is regarded as a combination of good fortune and longevity.
The first door-stopping wine is congratulations wine. There is a very kind and kind old Miao family. On both sides are two Miao girls in costumes. , still a bit spicy, I quietly told the old man to use less, and the old man really showed mercy.
Afterwards, two Miao girls guarded the remaining wines of Wealthy Wine, Prosperity Wine, Longevity Wine, Kindness Wine, Generous Wine, Bravery Wine, Hardworking Wine, Beautiful Wine, Luxurious Wine, Bright Wine, and Smart Wine. . Generally, tourists can easily "pass" as long as they bend down and take a sip. Friends who are too strong to drink may even skip it directly, but they can't touch the horn cup with their hands. If they accidentally touch or touch the horn cup with their hands, it means You're a warrior, up to the challenge of drinking down a full glass in one gulp.
Cun Lian Cun, an open-air museum of the Miao people
After passing the high mountains and rivers and twelve gates of wine, you can officially enter the Miao village. As soon as you enter the Miao village, you will be shocked by the scene scene. More than ten Miao villages are connected into a large area, and the wooden buildings with blue tiles and stilted feet are closely packed. Arranged on the slopes of the valley at the foot of Leigong Mountain, surrounded by mountains on all sides, the clear Baishui River slowly passes through the village, making the Miao Village look very spectacular. The best place to watch the Miao Village is on the viewing platform mountain at a high place. You can take the shuttle bus or walk up there. However, when taking the shuttle bus, you need to distinguish. There is a commuter bus for residents, and tourists cannot take it. .
Five bridges were built on the Baishui River, named Fengyu Bridge. They are named after Bridge No. 1 to Bridge No. 5. The time and time are easy to remember. The Miao Village is located according to Bridge X. Don’t underestimate these bridges. These bridges not only facilitate the traffic of residents on both sides of the river, but also increase the fun and beauty of the Miao village. It is said that they can also improve the Fengshui conditions in the village, and have the effect of "closing the wind and storing Qi". Most of the Miao villages are built along the water. Therefore, Fengyu Bridge is also a common thing. However, wooden bridges are easily destroyed by floods, which poses a safety hazard. At the same time, the solidity of the wind and rain bridge and the ability to resist floods are greatly increased.
Walking into the dwellings, you can find that the buildings in Xijiang Qianhu Miao Village are mainly wooden stilted buildings with a bucket-shaped roof structure, which can generally be divided into three-storey four-story three-room or five-story four-room structures. The ground floor is used for "production", storing tools, keeping poultry, livestock, storing fertilizer or being used as a toilet. The second floor is used as "living", where living spaces such as the living room, main room, bedroom and kitchen are all located here. There is also a unique "beauty leaning" on the outside of the main room, which is called "step breath" in Miao language, which is used for enjoying the shade, It is used for embroidery and rest, and it is also convenient for young men and women to visit each other and establish a preliminary relationship. This is a major feature of Miao architecture. The third floor is mainly used as a warehouse for storage of production and living materials such as grain and feed. In the period when the construction industry was not very developed, such a structure seemed particularly scientific.
In the center of the Miao Village, there is also a large area of farmland, which makes Xijiang Miao Village not an over-developed simple scenic spot, but a Miao village with a sense of life. There are schools, markets, people studying and working here, restoring the most primitive ecology.
When night falls, the smoke from the kitchen in the distance has quietly risen. It is good to go to the viewing platform to enjoy the night view or go back to the house to rest. When visiting the ancient village, you need to savor it carefully. Stay slowly for a few days. A quick glance at the flowers is not enough Appropriate, in addition to the special welcome activities of the Miao people and the unique architecture of the Miao people, you can also enjoy the singing and dancing of the Miao people in the Miao village, or experience intangible cultural heritage activities such as batik and embroidery. In short, in this open-air museum of the Miao people, you You can see an epic of the development of the Miao nationality, and you can also taste the pure Miao culture.
With the parade, the lively Leishan Miao Nian
This year's Miao Nian is on November 1st, and I came here by special fate to celebrate this year's Miao Nian with the local Miao compatriots. Early in the morning, Miao compatriots from all over the world came from all directions, gathered at the National Cultural Square in Leishan County, and divided into different teams. To welcome, very lively.
The entire parade stretched for thousands of meters, and the police comrades who worked hard to maintain order all the way. After arriving at the venue, they still enter the venue in the order of the parade. The five-star red flag is still the first to appear on the stage, followed by the various square teams. Although there are tens of thousands of people in the large team, they still appear to be in order.
If you say which team is the most eye-catching, it must be "Yang Asha". Yang Asha, although it is a poignant and elegant love story about a passionate and unrestrained Miao girl, but this woman eventually became the goddess of beauty of the Miao nationality, the most beautiful woman of the Miao nationality, declared by the Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture in Guizhou Province "Yang Asha" was approved by the State Council and included in the second batch of national intangible cultural heritage list. The Yang Asha team has the most youthful and beautiful face in the audience, and also has the most exquisite and gorgeous costumes. Not only is it the most popular, but it is also a kind of pride to be selected for this team.
The second one worth mentioning is the bronze drum team. This phalanx composed of little boys of different ages and drummers became the most lively phalanx in the audience. The children are always lively. Their bronze drums showed the agility of youth and brought vitality to life. . Bronze drums were also included in the first batch of intangible cultural heritage in my country.
The Miao nationality has a splendid culture, and the culture needs to be passed on, and it needs to be carried forward from generation to generation. This burden falls on the inheritors of intangible heritage. The protection of traditional culture by the country is increasing day by day. Therefore, the intangible cultural heritage team is not only a parade, but also a symbol of the inheritance of ancient culture, so that this ancient skill can still be seen today.
There are also a variety of performances such as the Golden Pheasant Dance. The annual Miao Nian is really lively, but the performance is still the Xijiang Festival.
Watching the performance, the shocking Xijiang Grand Ceremony
After watching the parade and performances, the Miao Nian has just begun. After the thousand-person long table banquet, the Xijiang Grand Ceremony is about to begin. This is the first real landscape performance about the Miao people in China, and it is definitely something to look forward to.
The first chapter of the performance is called "Prologue: Ode". The story begins with the wizard's debut, accompanied by the ancient myth of the butterfly, the mystery of the wizard, and the elegance of the butterfly, unveiling the mystery of the past of the Miao people.
The second chapter "Ancestral Heroes" and the third chapter "Soul Trek" tell the story of the Miao people, regardless of gender or age, bravely fighting against the invasion of foreign enemies. The unyieldingness of the homeland, this tragic story of Changhong's spirit, also deeply infected everyone on the scene.
In the end, the migrating Miao people found a new home. They opened up wasteland here, they multiplied and lived here, and they rebuilt their new home here. From the hardships of trekking to the harmonious scene of joy and joy, here is Xijiang Thousands of Miao Villages.
The whole stage play has a grand scene and many actors. It takes the mountains and rivers of Jijiu Miao Village, a Miao nationality village, as the background of the stage. A giant bull head hangs on the mountain behind. There is also a group of bronze drums, lotus lanterns all over the place, and the unique building next to the large waterwheel by the Qinghe River. It is also a "water granary" with a history of more than 600 years. The entire stage will rotate 360°, and the bright and flying iron filings will make people feel very shocked, and the trip is worthwhile. Starting from October this year, the Xijiang Grand Ceremony is also a perennial performance, and it is not something that only Miao Nian can see.
Visit the ancient town, rich and colorful cultural experience
After watching the performance, you will naturally have a stronger interest in the culture of the Miao people. In the Gage Ancient Alley of Qianhu Miao Village in Xijiang, there are rich and colorful cultural experiences, and batik is one of them. Batik is to use wax to draw a pattern on white cloth, put it into a dye vat and dip it with indigo, and then the wax used as a resist will crack naturally, making the cloth surface present a special "ice pattern", and finally present a pattern of white flowers on a blue background , is an ancient skill passed down by the Miao family for thousands of years.
Before the experience starts, you will first select the pattern you want to make. If you don’t know much about painting or you are short on time, it is recommended to choose a simpler pattern. Then the Miao compatriots will teach you how to use the wax knife. This is the initial teaching time , the principle of batik is actually not difficult, most people can easily get started, the key is practice makes perfect, but the wax pot is very hot, so beware of burns.
After everything is ready, the first step is to outline. Friends who can draw usually follow the template and copy it with a pencil. Friends who don’t know how to draw can also cover the template with a cloth to copy. The denser the lines, the more difficult it is to bend. I chose two fish, and it’s still a little difficult.
After drawing the outline, you need to apply wax along the outline with a wax knife. Waxing seems simple, but it is actually very skillful. If there is too much wax, it will clump up and even drip on the cloth. If there is too little wax, It will solidify quickly, resulting in failure of waxing, which requires a lot of patience. After the waxing is completed, the store will uniformly carry out the batik, and usually you can get it the next day. If you have left the next day, you can also leave your contact information and ask the store to help with the delivery, and you only need to pay an additional shipping fee.
In addition to batik, there is another craft worth experiencing, which is making glutinous rice cakes. Ciba is a snack that can be seen everywhere in the streets and alleys of Miao villages in Qianhu, Xijiang. However, its production process is far from as simple as it seems. First, steamed glutinous rice is put into a tank.
Then you need to keep beating. This is the most skillful place. The glutinous rice is very soft and sticky, it is not easy to use force, and it is very sticky. It is not easy to pull out when it sticks to the hammer. Before beating until there is no graininess, otherwise the making of the glutinous rice cakes would fail. We who don’t know how to use strength are really not as proficient as the grandmother of the Miao family. The cooked glutinous rice cakes are still warm and can be eaten directly, sweet and soft.
Taste delicious food with unique characteristics
Looked and looked, moved and moved, and the last step was to taste the unique food of the Miao family. When it comes to the Miao cuisine of Qianhu Miao Village, the most famous one is fish in sour soup. The key to this dish of fish in sour soup lies in the "sour soup". As the saying goes, a good pot of soup can support a shop. Although every household has fish in sour soup, the difference is very big.
The second famous dish is called "Drum Tibetan Meat". The largest one is two feet wide and two liang in weight. It is usually made of black pig breast pork belly or fat meat. It is fat and thin. It is boiled in white water without salt or Put chili. It is said that this is a dish for offering sacrifices to ancestors. In the past, pig nipples were even used, which is very local.
The third course is fried nine-scented worms. It is said to be Nine Fragrance Insect, but in fact it is not fragrant at all. On the contrary, this thing is called Fart Insect in Guizhou, and many people should know it. This "Insect Collection" not only has nine-scented insects, but also grasshoppers and mealworms, which make people stay away, but they don't taste any special.
In addition, there are many local specialties. Food is such a thing that seeing is believing, so you have to go and taste it yourself to enjoy it.
Of course, the Miao nationality is a nation that loves to drink. Before entering the gate of Qianhu Miao Village, the twelve gates of wine have already been set up. Whether it is at the gate or on the table, there will inevitably be a wave of "high mountains and flowing water". With the rice wine flowing into the mouth from high to low, I also received the most sincere blessings from the Miao people. Feel the enthusiasm of the Miao people!