Nongliershisijieqi
01 · Historical Records
The Miao Ganqiu originated in the Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture of Hunan Province and the surrounding provinces and cities; it is mainly transmitted in Huayuan County, Hunan, and is also found in Fenghuang County, Jishou City, Baojing County, Guzhang County, and Luxi County, as well as in Songtao County of Guizhou Province, Xiushan County of Chongqing, and Laifeng County of Hubei Province, and other areas where Miao people live. There are two widely circulated legends about the origin of the Miao Ganqiu. The Miao ancestors regarded the 'Beginning of Autumn', when they had defeated the demons and a good harvest was in sight, as a sign of victory, and celebrated it grandly year after year, a tradition that gradually evolved into today's Miao Ganqiu.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Miao Ganqiu, also called the Miao Ganqiu Festival, is a major traditional festival in which the Miao people celebrate the autumn harvest and in which young men and women socialize at the time of the Beginning of Autumn; it concentrates the display of Miao religious culture and folk art. The contents of the Miao Ganqiu cover a very wide range, mainly including ancestor worship, welcoming guests with blocking gates, the eight-person swing, Miao drums, Miao mountain songs, dragon playing, lion dancing, bianbianchang (open-field courting), traditional dance, and athletic competition; the scale is vast, the influence far-reaching, and it is rich in Miao cultural content. First, in the age of primal chaos, 'venomous snakes, fierce beasts, and demons of the mountains and waters' frequently harassed the Miao ancestors. On a night at the Beginning of Autumn, the Miao ancestors fought a fierce battle with the demons and won; they caught the demons, flayed them to cover a drum and cut their bones into drumsticks, and danced to the drum to celebrate the victory. Thereafter the Miao ancestors began the secure life described in the Miao Ancient Songs, in which 'people find their proper place and all things in the world grow freely'; they cleared land and raised crops, and by the golden autumn the grain filled the granaries. Second, according to tradition, in remote antiquity there was a Miao youth named Ba Guidare who, in search of love, set up a swing on the day of the Beginning of Autumn. In the end he met a beautiful girl named Mieniang in the swing ground, the two became husband and wife, lived a happy and blessed life, and their love story has been handed down through the ages. Later, in order to remember them, the Miao people respectfully called Ba Guidare and Mieniang the 'Autumn Grandfather and Autumn Grandmother' (Qiugong and Qiupo). In memory of them and of their happy and peaceful life, the Miao people hold the Miao Ganqiu every year at the Beginning of Autumn to celebrate.
Welcoming and blocking the gate
The hosts bar the gate and answer the arriving guests with questions, song and dance.
The eight-man autumn contest
Teams of eight compete, joining sport and song-and-dance in one contest.
The courtship gathering
The gathering where young men and women meet, with swings and dancing.
Beating the drum to celebrate victory
The drum beaten after the ancient victory is now a fixed item of the festival.
Ancestral rites for the Autumn Lord and Lady
The festival commemorates the couple honoured as the Autumn Lord and Lady.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Miao Ganqiu arose in the Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture and the surrounding region, and is transmitted most completely in Huayuan County, Hunan; it is also found in Fenghuang County, Jishou City, Baojing County, Guzhang County, and Luxi County, as well as in Songtao County in Guizhou, Xiushan County in Chongqing, and Laifeng County in Hubei, and other areas where Miao people live. A single Ganqiu is vast in scale, with ancestor worship, welcoming guests with blocking gates, the eight-person swing, Miao drums, Miao mountain songs, dragon playing, lion dancing, bianbianchang, traditional dance, and athletic competition following one another in sequence, and it often continues for several days. Each Ganqiu has its own local practice in the complexity of the ritual sequence, the size of the procession, and the choice of site: the Huayuan venue has always been the most orderly, while the villages at the junction of the three provinces of Hunan, Hubei, and Guizhou mostly take the opportunity of Ganqiu to visit relatives and friends, traveling together for dozens of li. Each village organizes its own Ganqiu; in recent decades the activities in Huayuan have been largely planned and organized by inheritors thoroughly familiar with the whole sequence, and the older elements of nuo opera and nuo dance and of folk ground opera still underlie them, so that ritual and performance cannot be sharply separated.
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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
According to relevant research, the custom of the Miao Ganqiu has existed since the time of the San Miao, a history of more than five thousand years to the present day; it is still widely transmitted in the Xiangxi region today and is comparatively well preserved in Huayuan County. The Miao Ganqiu has become an important cultural space for transmitting national values and ethics, for carrying forward national culture, and for inspiring the national spirit, and it plays an active role in enhancing national unity and exchange and in promoting social harmony, stability, and the development and prosperity of the national economy. Wu Haishen (recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): Male, of the Miao ethnicity, born in January 1946, a native of Huayuan County, Hunan Province. He is proficient in many folk skills, in nuo opera and nuo dance, and in folk ground opera; he has both the skills of a Miao Taoist ritual master and a fairly deep grounding in cultural knowledge and the written word. For many years he has taken part in the rescue and revival of the large-scale Miao folk festival Ganqiu, planning and organizing the activity thirteen times, compiling and writing the book 'The Miao Ganqiu', and preserving a large quantity of physical materials relating to the Miao Ganqiu; he is one of the inheritors in Huayuan County, Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture, most thoroughly versed in the procedures and skills of the Miao Ganqiu. He has devoted himself to the excavation and rescue of folk culture and to the transmission of its skills, and has taken on more than ten apprentices. He is a representative inheritor of the Lunar Twenty-Four Solar Terms (Miao Ganqiu) item in the fifth national-level batch of intangible cultural heritage.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Yang Xingya 05-3004
- Wu Haishen 05-3005
- Feng Wanming 05-3006
- Feng Wu
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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