Yao Panwang Festival
01 · Historical Records
The Panwang Festival in Ruyuan is a vow-fulfillment ceremony run by individual Guoshan Yao households; the date is fixed at the 16th day of the tenth lunar month, and its length varies from three days and three nights to seven days and seven nights. The weight of the festival rests first of all on the shigong (ritual masters): Pan Liang'an has been engaged in Panwang worship for more than sixty years, is able to preside over the entire Panwang ceremony, and is recognized as one of the few chief ritual masters of Beibai Town, Ruyuan. In a single full ritual procedure, each step — inviting the saints, arranging the seats, offering light, summoning grain, fulfilling vows, and thanking the saints — requires its own specialist; the long-drum performer, the suona band, and the song mothers and song masters each have their place, and if any one position is left unfilled the ceremony cannot go on. From this, one characteristic of the Ruyuan Panwang Festival can be seen: it is not a single performance but a whole body of personnel. The more complete the ritual, the more people it needs; whichever household has produced a shigong is the busiest during these days. The ritual texts passed down orally by the shigong, together with the tunes of the long drum, make up the standing of that household in these mountains.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Yao Panwang Festival derives from the Panwang song fair held on the 16th day of the tenth lunar month. On this day the Yao people gather together, singing and dancing to commemorate King Pan, and this gradually developed into the Panwang Festival. Today the Panwang Festival has gradually developed into a gathering to celebrate the harvest. Young men and women take the opportunity to express their feelings through song and to search for suitable partners. The Guoshan Yao "Panwang Festival," also called "fulfilling the vow to King Pan," is held either by a single household on its own or by the whole village. The Panwang Festival lasts either three days and three nights or seven days and seven nights, and its rites proceed in two main parts. The first part consists of "inviting the saints, arranging the seats, offering light, summoning grain, fulfilling vows, and thanking the saints"; throughout the ceremony the suona band plays accompaniment while the shigong perform the "Panwang Dance" (including the Bronze Bell Dance, the Dispatching and Recalling of Troops Dance, the Yuebiao Dance, the Sacrificing to the Troops Dance, and the Catching the Turtle Dance). The second part invites the ancestral deities of the Yao and the whole Yao people to come and take part in the "liule"; "liule" in the Yao language means amusement. This is the main part of the Panwang Festival: the various ancestral deities of the Yao are respectfully invited to join in the festival's cultural and recreational activities, and the long historical epic "Panwang Song," which sings of Yao mythology, history, politics, economy, culture and art, and social life, is chanted. The liule rite is generally held for one day and one night. The Panwang Festival ceremony is presided over by four principal shigong, each with his own duties — the vow-fulfillment master, the troop-sacrificing master, the troop-rewarding master, and the five-grains master — each with one assistant, making eight in all; in addition, four song mothers and song masters, six boys and girls, one long-drum performer, and a suona band take part in the Panwang Festival.
Inviting the deities and arranging the tablets
The first two steps of the first half: the ritual master invites the deities and arranges their tablets in order of rank.
Lighting and calling the grain
Candles are raised before the tablets and grain is called in with seed and shoots laid out for blessing.
The Panwang dance
A suite of dances performed by the ritual master with suona accompaniment, including bronze-bell, advance-and-retreat and turtle-catching dances.
The Flow of Joy and the Great Panwang Song
The second half of the rite, in which the ancestors are invited to join in play and the Great Panwang Song is chanted.
Fulfilling the vow and giving thanks
The closing stage: vows are fulfilled and the deities and ancestors are formally sent back to their places.
Three days and three nights, or seven
Two fixed lengths of ritual, chosen according to the size of the vow, with a specified team of ritual masters and musicians.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
As a popular festival with a long history and wide distribution, the Panwang Festival gathers together the great achievements of Yao traditional culture and is a cultural celebration that enhances ethnic cohesion and sustains ethnic unity.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Yao Panwang Festival · Yao Panwang Festival.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Its transmission is based mainly on master-disciple instruction and family inheritance. Pan Liang'an (record in the official file of the associated inheritor): male, Yao ethnicity, born in 1936, a native of Ruyuan, Guangdong. He has been engaged in Panwang worship for more than sixty years and is currently the only chief ritual master in Beibai Town, Ruyuan, Guangdong, who can fully master and preside over the Panwang ceremony. The ritual services he has mainly presided over include Panwang worship, dushen (body-consecration), hanging lanterns, ancestor worship, and funerals. He is a representative inheritor of the Yao Panwang Festival, a national-level intangible cultural heritage project of the second batch.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Panliangan 02-0773
- Zhao Youfu 04-1959
- Zhao Guangshun
- Deng Jingwan
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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