Zhuang Machongling Festival
01 · Historical Records
For historical reasons, in the 1960s and 1970s Maguai Festival activities were seldom held, and some Maguai pavilions were destroyed at that time; very few survive today.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Legend has it that what governs wind and rain is not the Dragon King but the Maguai goddess. The Zhuang villages along the banks of the Hongshui River worship the Maguai (frog) to pray for favorable weather, abundant harvests, and the thriving of people and livestock. Therefore, whenever the Spring Festival arrives, the people of the Zhuang villages here spontaneously gather around the Maguai pavilions (community pavilions) to hold grand and fervent Maguai song gatherings. The Maguai Festival generally runs from the first day of the New Year to the second day of the second lunar month; during the festival, worshipping the frog is the main activity, accompanied by gongs and drums as song friends from all directions are called together. Everyone puts on festive attire, gathering joyfully together with songs filling the fields. The activities generally follow three steps — finding the frog, mourning the frog, and burying the frog — carried out together with the Maguai dance and the singing of Maguai songs, to celebrate the harvest together and pray for favorable weather in the coming year. The movements of the Maguai dance mostly imitate the frog; the main actions include deep squats on both legs, leaning back while bracing a stick, quick sideways steps, and lifting-stamping with quivering points — full of the flavor of daily life, humorous and amusing. Maguai Festival activities prevail in the Zhuang villages for more than a hundred li on both banks of the Hongshui River; historically, two or three hundred Maguai pavilions were built. After the reform and opening up, Maguai Festival activities have been successively restored in various places.
Seeking the Frog Mother
The first of the three steps: villagers set out to locate the frog mother's shrine, beating gongs and drums to gather people from neighbouring villages.
Paying respects to the Frog Mother
The central rite: offerings are set before the shrine, the sacrifice words are chanted and the frog dance performed to ask for rain and harvests.
Burying the Frog Mother
The closing step: the deity is returned to its resting place as the gongs slow and the songs die away.
Frog movements of the dance
The dance imitates a frog: deep squats, leaning back on a staff, sideways shuffling steps and stamping toes.
Frog masks and invocation words
Wooden frog masks and the set recitation words, both requiring a performer who can match mask, words and drumming.
Shrines and song fairs
Shrines once numbering two or three hundred along the river now reduced, where sacrifices and song fairs are held together.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Zhuang Maguai Festival is prevalent mainly in the Hongshui River basin in northwestern Guangxi; it takes its name from the Zhuang word for frog, "maguai."
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
At present, young people are increasingly indifferent toward traditional folk cultural activities; some inheritors of the activities have left the stage because of advanced age, and some have passed away one after another, causing certain skills to go untransmitted. Relevant departments are taking measures to rescue and protect the folk activities related to the Maguai Festival. Liao Xifu (as recorded in the official archives of associated inheritors): Male, Zhuang ethnicity, born in December 1953, from Donglan County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. From childhood he loved folk culture and was good at singing and dancing. Influenced by the Zhuang Maguai culture, at the age of twenty he studied the frog songs under Liao Qingtang and helped organize the annual Maguai Festival. He is familiar with the ritual procedures of the Zhuang Maguai Festival, has mastered the frog sacrifice incantations and the craft of making frog masks, and is the chief organizer of the local Zhuang Maguai Festival activities and the intoner of the sacrificial rites. For many years he has taken part in and presided over the local Zhuang Maguai Festival activities each year, actively carrying out publicity and display work for the Zhuang Maguai Festival culture. Representative inheritor of the Zhuang Maguai Festival, a fifth-batch national-level intangible cultural heritage project. He has long devoted himself to the protection and transmission of the Maguai culture and to the training of successors; he currently has more than ten apprentices.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Liao Xifu 05-2975
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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