Sui Duan Festival
01 · Historical Records
At the same time, the Duan Festival is an important cultural space for the origin, transmission, and development of many Shui folk arts, including the ox-fighting dance, the bronze drum dance, the reed-pipe dance, and antiphonal singing.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Shui mainly live in Sandu Shui Autonomous County, Guizhou Province. The Duan Festival is the grandest traditional festival of the Shui people, equivalent to the Spring Festival of the Han Chinese. According to the Shui script texts and the Shui calendar, the Duan Festival is held at the end of the Shui calendar year and the beginning of the new year, in the season of grain ripening, to celebrate the harvest, send off the old year, and welcome the new. The festival period corresponds to the eighth through the tenth lunar months. The date of the Duan Festival is calculated with the hai day as its backbone; there are many batches of observance, nine in ancient times and seven today, with the first and last about fifty days apart, preserving the old customs of the ancient Shui clans and tribes in celebrating the ripening of grain and the passing of the new year. The main activities of the Duan Festival are sacrifices and horse racing. For the two meals connecting "New Year's Eve" and "New Year's Day", meat is avoided and vegetarian food eaten, but fish and shrimp are not. During the festival, bronze drum sounds rise and fall unceasingly, and melodious songs and reed-pipe tunes echo from dawn to dusk in the bamboo towers nestled in green bamboo; the mountain villages of the water country are immersed in the festive atmosphere. The horse-racing meet is the climax of Duan Festival activities. The racing site is called a "duan slope" or "year slope"; after drinking the New Year's wine, people set off in groups from every village to gather here, and the duan slope is suddenly a sea of people. Young people go to the duan slope not only to watch the horse races but also to treat this grand gathering as a good chance to find a sweetheart. Before the race, a simple sacrificial ceremony is also held. People set an offering table in the middle of the track, laid with all kinds of offerings, and the presiding sacrifice is the most respected elder of the village. Standing solemnly before the table with a cup of wine filled to the brim, the elder mutters words, mostly remembrances of the ancestors and wishes for good fortune. When the ceremony ends, the village elder mounts a horse and leads it once around the track, and only then is the race declared begun. The Shui form of horse racing is very unusual and is called "horse squeezing". At the commander's shout, the riders whip their horses on, charging and colliding in the valley and squeezing out through the struggle to race up toward the summit of the slope; whoever reaches the top of the far slope first is the winner. The Duan Festival can be called the longest-lasting, most-batched New Year festival with distinctive ethnic characteristics. Climbing high to race horses is a phenomenon unique to the New Year festivals of the southern peoples.
Seven batches of Duan
The schedule follows the Shui calendar: seven batches (formerly nine) fixed on haichi days and spaced about fifty days apart.
Abstaining from meat on the eve and the first day
The two meals joining the eve and the first day are vegetarian, though fish and shrimp are not forbidden.
The horse-race rite at Duanpo
Before racing begins an offering table is set in the centre of the track and an elder of high standing presides over the rite.
The elder's lap before the start
After the rite the village elder leaps onto a horse and circles the track, and only then is the race declared open.
The squeeze race
A distinctive Shui race in which riders barge at each other in the valley to force their way up to the far summit.
Bronze drums, lusheng and antiphonal song
Bronze drums, lusheng and song fill the bamboo villages from morning to night throughout the long festival.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
In Sandu the Duan Festival is not one day but a string of them. Following the Shui script texts and Shui calendar, the dates are calculated by hai days, nine batches in ancient times and seven today, with the first and last about fifty days apart. The villages of each batch observe it one after another, and whichever household's turn comes first is the first to slaughter livestock and set out offerings. The festival falls at the end of the Shui calendar year and the start of the new, in the season of grain ripening, and is completed in stages between the eighth and tenth lunar months. The observing villages connect with the two horse-racing grounds, the duan slope and the year slope. Mountain people come in groups after drinking the New Year's wine, and the duan slope is for a time a surging crowd; bronze drums and reed-pipe tunes sound in the villages from dawn till dusk, the bamboo towers are hidden among green bamboo, and the horse race is the busiest close of the whole festival. The racing is usually presided over by the most respected elder of the village, who sets an offering table in the middle of the track before the race; the elder raises a cup and offers prayers, and after the rite mounts a horse and leads it once around the track before the race is declared open.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The reason the Duan Festival's batches and cycle can stretch to nearly two months is that the Shui script texts and Shui calendar fix the dates: which batch falls on which hai day is looked up by the village elders in the books, so no one needs to rely on memory and argue, and there are no errors of calculation. Only when the grain ripens is the festival held, so the Duan Festival is both the start of the year and a final accounting of the rice harvest. For the two meals connecting "New Year's Eve" and "New Year's Day", meat is avoided and vegetarian food eaten, but fish and shrimp are not. This exception best reveals the basic character of Shui livelihood and food customs: in mountain rice-growing, the days when fish and shrimp supplemented the fat in the diet were long, so the taboo simply could not extend to fish. The Duan Festival is also an important cultural space for the origin, transmission, and development of many folk arts such as the ox-fighting dance, the bronze drum dance, the reed-pipe dance, and antiphonal singing.
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
This static English edition is rendered at the edge for search engines, AI crawlers and readers without JavaScript; it mirrors the bilingual dossier. 阅读中文版，或返回 英文名录。