Miao Zimei Festival
01 · Historical Records
Taijiang's Sisters' Festival is known as "Nonggaliang", with the festival period from the fifteenth to the seventeenth of the third month; its center is Laotun and Shidong, and the gathering points are the paddy fields and mountain hollows around Rongjiang, Yangjia, and Pianzhai. This festival puts transplanting and choosing a mate in the same stretch of time. In the third month the paddies first come to life, and young men and women go down to the fields together to scoop up fish and shrimp, comparing skill and singing antiphonal songs as they work. If a girl takes a liking to someone, she hides an object in his sisters' rice: a silver hairpin, an embroidered handkerchief, or a length of red thread with a knot in it. Only if he eats it does it count as a reply; if he does not find it, there is no such feeling and nothing more need be said. According to local belief, eating sisters' rice prevents insect bites; although this is a saying drawn from farming experience, it raises this meal from a personal courtesy into a proper public matter. The fit between the festival season and the farming calendar also lies here: the fifteenth to seventeenth of the third month is precisely the time of spring sowing and transplanting and when mountain bamboo shoots appear. The days when Miao families visit relatives, gather for the transplanting season, and exchange farm tools already fall in these days. Because the Sisters' Festival falls on them, many go and many come, and the festival can stand firm.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Taijiang Miao Sisters' Festival is a traditional festival of the Miao people of Laotun and Shidong in Taijiang County, held annually from the fifteenth to the seventeenth day of the third lunar month. On the occasion, Miao young men and women put on festival finery and gather at Rongjiang, Yangjia, and Pianzhai to celebrate this traditional holiday, which is rich in ethnic character. The Taijiang Miao Sisters' Festival is called "Nonggaliang" in the Miao language. Centered on young women, its main activities are the display of song, dance, and dress, courting excursions, eating sisters' rice, and the exchange of keepsakes between young men and women. The festival is large in scale, and its content is rich and distinctive. Eating sisters' rice is an important ceremonial item of this festival. Sisters' rice is also a keepsake given by girls to their sweethearts to express affection, and it is the most important marker of the festival. Going down to the fields to scoop up fish and shrimp is one of the sisters' rice activities: girls from one village and young men from another make an appointment, and the fishing-and-shrimping activity serves as a courtship custom for finding a chosen partner. Drum-treading is an important way for the whole community to take part in the festival's activities. Dressed up carefully by their parents and wearing festival finery, the girls gather toward the drum ground to tread the drums; from the drum ground one can see whose dress is brightest and whose silver ornaments are both beautiful and plentiful, and in this way the Miao display their dress culture. At night the young men and women go on courting excursions and sing antiphonal songs, paying court and making love; the men ask the women for sisters' rice, and the girls hide keepsakes in the rice to express their differing feelings toward the men. The Sisters' Festival is also a stage for community members to visit relatives and friends, enjoy cultural entertainment, and socialize, and it is a bond for forging cohesion and strengthening unity within the ethnic group.
Eating the sisters' rice
The central rite: a girl serves a pot of rice to a young man, hiding a token inside to signal her answer.
Catching fish in the fields
Girls and boys from neighbouring villages meet in the shallow water, catching fish and shrimp while courting.
Beating the drum dance
Girls in carefully prepared festival dress gather at the drum ground, where clothing and silver ornaments are displayed through the drumming.
Courting songs on the night round
Young people sing from village to village at night, the young men asking for the sisters' rice and receiving tokens in return.
A festival centred on the young women
A festival organized around the young women, whose dress, singing and craft are displayed and compared at the drum ground.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
According to local belief, eating sisters' rice prevents insect bites.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The Miao Sisters' Festival has a long history and has been passed down to the present as a folk custom and a way of courtship and socializing.
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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