Derung Kaquewa Festival
01 · Historical Records
In 1991, the Standing Committee of the People's Congress of Gongshan Derung and Nu Autonomous County, in accordance with the wishes of the Derung people, fixed January 10 of the Gregorian calendar each year as the Derung Kaquwa Festival. The origin of Kaquwa has no written record and exists only in the Derung's own conception of the calendar. The Derung still divide the year into twelve months matched with the zodiac animals, and the year festival was not fixed at a single point but determined by rotating the length of the festival period, as short as three days and as long as nine; how long it ran depended on the year's harvest and snow conditions. In 1991, the Standing Committee of the People's Congress of Gongshan Derung and Nu Autonomous County, in accordance with the wishes of the Derung people, fixed January 10 of the Gregorian calendar each year as the Kaquwa Festival, and the festival period falls around the twelfth lunar month, coinciding with the old year-end rites of worshipping the mountains and hunting. This is also a festival maintained among a people without writing through oral transmission and wood notches: before the festival each household informs the others by wood notch, who is responsible for the prayer texts, who prepares the muluo wine, whose family supplies the cowhide, and every village knows in its heart. Once the Gregorian date was fixed, there was added to the wood notch a Gregorian line that everyone recognizes, so the festival's summons no longer depends solely on people running messages.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Kaquwa Festival is held in the twelfth lunar month, that is, between December and the following January in the Gregorian calendar, with a festival period of no less than three days and no more than nine. The festival's contents include wood-notch messaging, the circle dance, shooting at game models, burning pine needles on the hearth for good fortune, drinking muluo wine, and the cattle-spearing rite. The Kaquwa Festival is of important value for exploring the trajectory of Derung cultural development, and especially for grasping the origins and historical changes of the Derung calendar. In addition, the Kaquwa Festival preserves the wood-notch method of transmitting information, a precious sample for studying the social organizational mechanisms of peoples without writing.
Messages carved on wood
Urgent messages are carved on wooden sticks with notches and slashes readable without literacy, forming the communication basis of the festival.
Rites to the mountain and hunting gods
The core rite led by a ritual priest, offering chicken, wine and incense to the deities of the mountain and the hunt.
Burning pine needles in the hearth
Pine needles are burned in the family hearth as an offering of cleanliness and good fortune, with the fire kept alight through the night.
Ritual cattle slaughter
An ox is brought to the village ground, blessed by the priest and ritually killed, its blood spilled on the earth and its meat shared.
The Guozhuang circle dance
People form a circle around the hearth, hands on the shoulders of their neighbours, stepping together as the singing rises.
Shooting at animal models
Straw animal targets are set up on the slope and shot at from measured distances, testing both marksmanship and the maker's craft.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Derung Kaquwa Festival is transmitted in all Derung villages of the Derung River valley in western Gongshan Derung and Nu Autonomous County, Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province. The festival periods of the villages follow one after another: the villages upstream of the Derung River open the festivities first, proceeding from upstream through the middle reaches to the lower reaches, with each village entering its festival period in turn. The Kaquwa celebrations in Derung mountain villages throughout the Derung River valley last about a month in all.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
In addition, the Kaquwa Festival is an important vehicle for the systematic integration and transmission of Derung traditional culture, manifesting the Derung concept of reverence for nature and the wish for a smooth and successful life. Wang Guoguang (from the official archives of an associated inheritor): Male, Derung, born in August 1968, from Gongshan Derung and Nu Autonomous County, Yunnan Province. From childhood he took a strong interest in Derung folk sacrifices and often took part in the various sacrificial activities organized by his village. Since 1982 he studied under the ritual master Wang Qiangsheng, learning the prayer texts for the Kaquwa Festival rites of worshipping the mountain god and the hunting god, recording and singing folk songs, and mastering the various Derung ritual procedures; he became a well-known ritual master and master of ceremonies in the Derung area. From 2014 to the present he has led disciples in Derung River Township in conducting Derung Kaquwa Festival activities, actively transmitting Derung traditional culture. Representative inheritor of the fifth national-level batch of the Derung Kaquwa Festival intangible cultural heritage project.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Wang Guoguang 05-2978
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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