Torch Festival
01 · Historical Records
Some scholars believe that the origin of the Torch Festival is related to people's worship of fire, and that its purpose was to use fire to drive away pests and eliminate harm so as to protect the growth of crops. The Torch Festival fully embodies the Yi people's national character of reverence for fire and preserves ancient information about the origins and development of the Yi, giving it important historical and scientific value. It is one of the most iconic symbols of Yi traditional culture and a carrier of such cultural elements as traditional music, dance, poetry, food, costume, agriculture, astronomy, and veneration. It is of great significance for strengthening the Yi people's sense of ethnic self-identity and promoting social harmony; at the same time, as an occasion for the Yi people's exchanges with other ethnic groups, it plays a practical role in promoting ethnic unity.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Yi Torch Festival is a traditional festival of all Yi regions, celebrated in Yi areas such as Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan. The Bai, Naxi, Jino, Lahu, and other ethnic groups also celebrate this festival. The Torch Festival on the 24th day of the sixth lunar month is the most solemn, grandest, and most ethnically distinctive festival of Chuxiong and the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture. In ancient times the Torch Festival was also known as the Xinghui Festival. Some scholars believe that this festival was originally a New Year festival in the Yi ten-month calendar. The Torch Festival is the New Year's Day of the first half of the year, and is therefore also called the Great New Year. During the festival, every village lashes together a great torch of dry pine wood and fatwood and stands it in the center of the village, while each household erects a small torch in front of its door; when night falls the torches are lit and the whole village is ablaze with light. At the same time, people carry small torches and walk once around the fields and houses, sticking torches and fatwood into the corners of the fields. Young men and women sing to instrumental accompaniment and dance around the great village torch, reveling all night without cease. During the festival there are also such recreational activities as horse racing, bullfighting, archery, wrestling, tug-of-war, and swinging, and trade fairs are opened. The four major categories of activities held during the Torch Festival — sacrificial rites, arts and sports, social intercourse, and the exchange of goods — are a concentrated expression of the rigor and completeness of the Yi cultural system. The Yi Torch Festival has a long history, a broad popular base, wide coverage, and far-reaching influence.
Bimo blessing of the fire
The rite that opens the festival, in which a ritual specialist recites prayers for the crops before the great torches are lit.
Great knife dance
A knife dance performed with drums and torches in the same scene, with each village keeping its own formations.
Drawing the god masks and images
Masks and god images made of carved wood covered in paper, distinguished by painted brows and teeth, prepared before the festival.
Taking torches around the fields
Torches are planted at the village gate and each home, then carried around the fields and set in the corners of the plots.
Racing, bull fighting and the fair
Racing, bull fighting, archery and wrestling share the days, with a trade fair set up between the sports.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Torch Festival of Chuxiong Prefecture centers on the Yi-populated counties of Chuxiong City, Lufeng, and Shuangbai. The villages around Lufeng have preserved to this day a branch of the great-sword dance: the dancers enter carrying great swords in time with the drumbeats, the blades of the swords sharing the ground with the torches, and once the sacrifice is finished the dance begins, firelight and sword-gleam shining in interplay. This aspect differs from the singing and dancing around the fire commonly seen in Liangshan, and serves as a marker for telling the Chuxiong Torch Festival apart from the Liangshan one.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Torch Festival · Torch Festival.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Pu Shunfa (record in the official file of the associated inheritor): male, Yi ethnicity, born in November 1937, a native of Lufeng County, Yunnan Province. From childhood he followed his uncle in studying Yi scriptures and sacrificial knowledge; later he took Pu Maoqing and Pu Maosheng as his masters and studied the Yi great-sword dance. After many years of study and practice, he is able not only to preside over the sacrificial activities of the Yi Torch Festival and has mastered the painting of the Nuo deity masks and divine images used in great-sword dance sacrifices, but is also skilled at playing ethnic musical instruments. From 2004 to the present, he has taken part in great-sword dance performances at the Torch Festival every year and has presided over Bimo sacrificial activities. He is a representative inheritor of the Torch Festival (Yi Torch Festival), a national-level intangible cultural heritage project of the fourth batch. At the same time, through personal instruction and example he has trained a large number of Yi youth in order to transmit Yi traditional culture.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Pushunfa 04-1958
- Wang Xiuping
- He Yinggui
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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