Li Sanyuesan Festival
01 · Historical Records
Records related to the "Sanyuesan" (the third day of the third month) appear in historical works of the Song dynasty. In 1984, in accordance with the wishes and demands of the Li people, the Guangdong Provincial People's Congress and the Guangdong Provincial People's Government decided to designate the Sanyuesan as a traditional festival of the Li people.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Sanyuesan Festival is a traditional festival of the Li people of Hainan in which they mourn their industrious and brave ancestors and express their longing for love and happiness. There are two accounts of the origin of the Sanyuesan Festival. The first account holds that, as legend has it, long ago the Li people living along the banks of the Changhua River suffered a catastrophic flood in which people and livestock died, leaving only a pair of siblings named Tianfei and Nanyin. After the two siblings grew up, they decided to search for partners separately, promising to meet again beneath Yanwo Ridge on every third day of the third month. Thereafter, every third day of the third month, Nanyin and his wife Tianfei returned here with their sons and grandsons to welcome the spring. In their memory, the Li people call the stone cave the Niangmu Cave, and the Sanyuesan naturally became a grand festival for the Li people. The second account holds that, as legend has it, long ago a stone cave was home to a raven spirit that committed every kind of evil, keeping the Li people from living and working in peace and contentment. One day the raven spirit seized the beautiful Li maiden E'niang; that year on the third day of the third month, E'niang's sweetheart Agui went up the mountain with daggers, bows, and arrows to rescue her, but was killed by the raven spirit. On hearing the news, E'niang was devastated with grief; finally, seizing the opportunity while the raven spirit slept soundly, she killed it, avenging Agui and ridding the Li people of a great scourge. E'niang never married for the rest of her life, and every year on the third day of the third lunar month she would go to the E'xian Cave to sing the love songs she and Agui had sung during their courtship. Later, in memory of her, the Li people named the mountain cave the E'niang Cave (Changjiang). Every year on the third day of the third month, unmarried young Li men and women from nearby gather on E'xian Ridge, singing love songs to find their sweethearts. This activity has grown year by year and spread to every Li settlement in Hainan, forming a grand traditional festival among the Li people of Hainan. Fan Chengda of the Song dynasty states in the Guihai Yuheng Zhi: "In spring come the swing gatherings; men and women from the neighboring ridges dress up and come to visit, hand in hand and shoulder to shoulder, singing to one another in response — this is called a play (zuoju)." Since ancient times, on the third day of the third lunar month each year, the Li people, dressed in festive attire and carrying mountain baskets of rice wine and fragrant rice in bamboo tubes, converge from all directions to celebrate the festival: some worship the first ancestors, while others meet in small groups to sing in antiphonal exchange, dance, and play percussion and wind instruments. Young men and women revel all the more in the festival, making friends through song and conveying affection through dance, intoxicated in a happy river of love; only as day is about to break do they reluctantly part, promising to meet again at the next Sanyuesan. The Li Sanyuesan has a very broad popular foundation. As the times change, the content of the celebrations has grown increasingly diverse, but antiphonal singing, folk athletic competitions, ethnic song and dance, and marriage-custom performances remain the most basic elements. The Sanyuesan Festival is a cultural resource handed down among the Li for a thousand years and the most concrete and typical expression of Li culture.
Antiphonal courtship songs
Young men and women sing antiphonally on the slopes and riverbanks, using the songs to get to know one another before arranging to meet.
Pipe and percussion music
Wind and percussion instruments punctuate the singing on the slopes, one instrument carrying the melody while the drums hold the beat.
Paying respects to the ancestors
At daybreak the village sets out an altar, offers new rice and wine and recounts the ancestral stories before the day of song begins.
Basket wine and bamboo-tube fragrant rice
Homespun rice wine carried down from the hills in bamboo tubes, and fragrant rice also packed in tubes, offered before anything else.
Wedding custom performances
Stages set up in the festival square re-enact wedding songs, door-blocking and shoulder-pole carrying, so customs are checked against practice.
Traditional sports contests
Tug-of-war, wrestling, archery, swinging and bamboo-pole dances are held between villages, followed by a shared drink.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Sanyuesan is not unique to Wuzhishan in Hainan. It is held on the same day in all the mountainous areas inhabited by the Li, with villagers visiting one another; mountain baskets of rice wine and fragrant rice in bamboo tubes remain indispensable. The Wuzhishan area, because of its concentrated settlement, has the densest intercourse between villages. The distribution of festival customs is also affected by subgroup differences: in the Shuiman and Yapai area, most of the hill-rice fields have already been ploughed once by March, so young men and women have many occasions to work in the fields, and the festival's antiphonal singing often takes place between the field edges and the mountain foot; in the Nansheng area, ancestor worship and antiphonal singing are given equal weight, with the village elders leading people up the mountain after the sun rises, the singing and dancing coming only afterwards.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Double Third Festival · Double Third Festival.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Both origin stories of the Sanyuesan speak of paired romances — the tryst of the siblings and the wronged maiden who died for love — so the festival takes antiphonal singing as its center and the gathering of young men and women as its focus. These two threads give the Sanyuesan, compared with other seasonal festivals in Hainan, a stronger hue of courtship and marriage, and make it rely on song gatherings that can start and disperse at any time, with no need for a fixed stage: once people arrive and the song begins, the festival is made.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Lu Chaoyuan 05-2974
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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