Yao Panwang Festival
01 · Historical Records
The Yao Panwang Festival (Returning the Vow to King Pan) is recorded in Song dynasty classics such as Zhou Qufei's Lingwai Daida: "Every year in the tenth month, the Yao of the ridges gather to worship King Dubei before the temple." The ancestors of the Zixing Yao migrated and settled in Zixing 1,391 years ago, and the Yao Panwang Festival (Returning the Vow to King Pan) has continued ever since. In 1951, the Third Sub-delegation of the Central Visiting Delegation made explicit records of the "Great Returning of the Vow to King Pan" and the "Small Returning of the Vow to King Pan" among the Zixing Yao. Since the 1990s, the Yao people have raised funds to repair the King Pan temples, and the Panwang Festival (Returning the Vow to King Pan) has been restored and transmitted.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Yao Panwang Festival (Returning the Vow to King Pan) is a folk activity, with commemorating King Pan as its main content, transmitted mainly in the Yao-inhabited areas of Chapu Yao Village, Tangdong Subdistrict, Zixing City, Chenzhou City, Hunan Province, and in Huilongshan Yao Township and Bamianshan Yao Township. Within its territory, rivers and mountains crisscross, the trees are lush and green, and the waters and mountains are joined together. The Zixing Yao Panwang Festival (Returning the Vow to King Pan) consists of the "Returning of the Vow to King Pan" and the Panwang Festival song gathering. Every year on the sixteenth day of the tenth lunar month, the Zixing Yao commemorate King Pan through sacrificial rites, song, and dance. The Panwang Festival (Returning the Vow to King Pan) is divided into two major parts, the upper and the lower. The upper part, "Tengxiang Liangyuan," includes "Raising the Incense to Invite the Saints," "Mounting the Cloud Terrace," and the offerings of "Ju River" and "Crossing the Ocean" (returning the round-basket vow); in the rites, the shigong masters dance the King Pan Dance, the Bronze Bell Dance, and the Sacrifice to the Soldiers Dance, among others. The lower part, "Dapai Liangyuan," includes slaughtering a pig to worship the ancestors (returning the whole-pig great vow), "Catching the Yellow-Flower Lad" (returning the marriage vow), "Laying the Small Table" (returning the rat vow), performing nuo opera in the Qingyun Hall, and hanging the red gauze curtain (returning the marriage vow). All the ancestral gods and spirits of the Yao people are respectfully invited to take part in the recreational activities of the Panwang Festival (Returning the Vow to King Pan), and the Panwang Grand Song, which remembers Yao life, is sung. The rites of the Panwang Festival (Returning the Vow to King Pan) are presided over by shigong masters, with song mothers and song masters, boys and girls, and others as important participants. The Yao Panwang Festival (Returning the Vow to King Pan) has distinct ethnic cultural characteristics, a marked consciousness of honoring ancestors and being grateful, and a deep popular foundation; with its unique sacrificial ritual propriety and rich cultural content, it records the life and emotions of the Yao people, and its character of group transmission is highly distinctive. The Zixing Yao Panwang Festival (Returning the Vow to King Pan) is a folk activity that strengthens centripetal force and maintains unity. It incorporates every aspect of the history, culture, social customs, ethics and morality, and knowledge of production and life of the Zixing Yao, as well as the sentiments of honoring ancestors, being grateful, and taking the family and the nation as one; it has the functions of praying for longevity and abundant harvests, averting disasters and removing misfortunes, and ensuring the continuation of descendants.
Offering incense and inviting the deities
The first step of the upper section: incense is raised and the deities and ancestors are formally invited with set formulas.
Ascending the cloud platform
A staged ascent on a temporary platform, singing the road upward while the congregation looks on from below.
Calling back from the river and crossing the sea
A vow category in which the ritual master enacts a sea crossing, with household goods loaded aboard a boat-shaped prop.
Slaughtering the pig for the ancestors
The pig is killed in honour of the ancestors and the meat shared out, each table knowing which vow its meal answers.
Catching the yellow-flower child
A rite answering vows for children, in which the ritual master chases and seizes a symbolic figure before a young couple.
The small feast and the Nuo play
A small two-person feast answering vows for children's ailments, and a Nuo play performed in the ancestral hall.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Zixing lies in the southeast of Hunan Province, at the junction of the three provinces of Hunan, Guangdong, and Jiangxi, in the upper reaches of the Leishui River in the Xiang River basin, at the western foot of the Luoxiao Mountains.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Yao Panwang Festival · Yao Panwang Festival.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The returning of vows in Zixing is divided into great and small vows, each with its own name and method of sacrifice: the whole-pig great vow, the marriage vow, the round-basket vow, and the rat vow are each matched to their case; the size of the vow is decided by the matter prayed for, and the ritual sequence expands or contracts accordingly. That funerals, marriages, prayers for children, and disaster-averting are all brought into the same set of ritual procedure shows that in Zixing the Panwang Festival bears the public function of the whole stockade seeking blessings together, rather than being held by a single household. Zhou Qufei's Lingwai Daida of the Song dynasty already recorded that "every year in the tenth month, the Yao of the ridges gather to worship King Dubei before the temple"; in the 1950s the Central Visiting Delegation made explicit records of the "Great Returning of the Vow to King Pan" and the "Small Returning of the Vow to King Pan"; and since the 1990s the people have raised funds to repair the King Pan temples, so that the festival custom has once again gained a fixed house to return to. These three records follow one another in sequence, and it can be seen that although the same set of ritual procedure varied in scale in different eras, the backbone of the invocations, offerings, and dance sections has not been lost.
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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