Yao Panwang Festival
01 · Historical Records
The Panwang Festival in Hezhou is likewise a vow-fulfillment ceremony, but it places greater emphasis on the clear ordering of ritual documents, from which the officiant's standing is established. The officiant must transcribe the ritual texts himself; his household holds more than one hundred scripture volumes, and he is also skilled at making all kinds of ritual paraphernalia, giving both the texts and the paraphernalia to his disciples. Only when the scriptures and the paraphernalia are handed over together can the master-disciple transmission be considered complete; otherwise the rite could only rely on memory in the moment. Within a mode of transmission based mainly on master-disciple instruction and family inheritance, several people are now able to preside independently over the main body of the Panwang Festival ceremony, so that the "Panwang Dance" and "Panwang Song" in the ritual procedure can still be staged by practitioners in proper sequence, without needing to be described by outsiders.
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 opening steps of the first half: the ritual master invites the spirits and arranges their tablets in order of rank.
Lighting the tablets 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 ritual-master dances with suona accompaniment, including bronze-bell, advance-and-retreat and turtle-catching dances.
The Flow of Joy and the Great Panwang Song
The main 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
Vows are fulfilled and the deities and ancestors formally sent back to their places at the close of the rite.
Performing the ritual-master dance and teaching apprentices
Ritual-master dances have been staged across the region while the rite itself passes down by text and by word of mouth, with nine apprentices of whom several now preside over the main ceremonies.
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. Zhao Youfu (record in the official file of the associated inheritor): male, Yao ethnicity, born in August 1946, a native of Hezhou, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. In 1981 he successfully underwent the dujie (ordinance) rite, obtaining the qualification to become an officiant (shigong), and began presiding over ceremonies to fulfill the vow to King Pan; to date he has presided over more than one hundred of them. He is fond of transcribing, sorting out, and compiling ritual texts, and his household holds more than one hundred scripture volumes. He is skilled at making all kinds of ritual paraphernalia, and gives the texts and paraphernalia to his disciples for their use. He frequently travels to Nanning and Guilin and to Guangdong, Yunnan, Hunan, and other provinces to take part in Panwang Festival-related activities and performances. He once traveled to California in the United States to attend a Panwang Festival ceremony, exchanging with Yao people from other regions and jointly promoting the folk culture of the Panwang Festival. He is a representative inheritor of the Yao Panwang Festival, a national-level intangible cultural heritage project of the fourth batch. In 2011, the "Shigong Dance" program in which he performed won the Tenth Shanhua Award for Chinese Folk Literature and Art, presented by the China Folk Literature and Art Association and other bodies. He has nine disciples in all, including his eldest son, of whom three have completed their apprenticeship and can independently preside over the main body of the Panwang Festival ceremony.
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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