Miao Siyueba
01 · Historical Records
The Miao Fourth Day of the Eighth Month Festival originated in Miao sacrificial activities: sacrifices to heaven and earth, to ancestors, to heroes, and to the gods and spirits.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Miao Fourth Day of the Eighth Month Festival is a major occasion for the Miao people to gather and celebrate, and it is widely observed throughout the Miao areas of China. Acting on the request of the Miao people, the State Ethnic Affairs Commission issued an instruction on May 3, 1981: 'agreeing that the eighth day of the fourth lunar month be made a traditional festival of the Miao people. ' From then on, the Miao in the capital together with the Miao masses in Hunan, Hubei, Chongqing, Yunnan, Guizhou, and other provinces and municipalities shared in the joy of the 'Fourth Day of the Eighth Month' festival. As the times have changed and the tastes of the Miao people have shifted, song and dance performances and social exchange have been progressively added to the festival's activities, making its content richer and more colorful. On this day, thousands upon thousands of Miao men and women put on festive dress and pour in from all directions to sing Miao songs in antiphony around the singing ground. Miao young people call it 'going to the song fair', also known as 'flower-hop and moon-hop'. The singing of Miao songs runs through almost the entire course of the festival's activities. Miao songs are divided into two major vocal styles, high voice and level voice. Their content touches every aspect of Miao social production and daily life, historical events, historical figures, and customs, fully demonstrating the Miao cultural characteristic of conveying emotion through song, narrating through song, and taking pleasure through song. The Miao Fourth Day of the Eighth Month is a grand gathering of multiple peoples -- Miao, Dong, and Yao -- in Hunan, Hubei, Chongqing, Yunnan, Guizhou, and other provinces and municipalities, and it will play a positive role in strengthening ethnic unity, inspiring the national spirit, and building a harmonious socialist society.
The great song gathering
Thousands of men and women in festival dress pour into the song ground to sing in antiphonal Miao, an event the youth call chasing the song field or jumping flower and moon.
High-register and low-register Miao song
Miao song divides into a high and a low register, with subject matter spanning work, history, figures and custom, showing how the people narrate and entertain through song.
Rites first, songs afterwards
Each village completes its own rites to heaven, ancestors, heroes and deities before setting out for the song ground, so the day pairs devotion with sociability.
Wu Niuzhen's lion dance and drum work
Born in 1949, Wu Niuzhen learned lion dancing, then the g accompanying drums, then Miao drumming and song, and later collected and created over thirty nuo plays.
A festival attended across provinces
The festival is a gathering shared by Miao, Dong and Yao communities across several provinces; a 1981 ruling formally recognised the date as a traditional Miao holiday.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Jishou area of western Hunan is the most important gathering place for the Miao Fourth Day of the Eighth Month. The singing grounds are set on slopes and open threshing floors inside and outside the city; on the eighth day of the fourth month, from early morning, people from the surrounding villages enter the grounds supporting the old and carrying the young, the processions converging from mountain paths and river valleys into a ring, so whether the ground is wide and level directly determines the scale of attendance at this song gathering. Those who come are not only from the local villages: the Jishou Fourth Day of the Eighth Month has long been linked with the Miao, Dong, and Yao peoples of Hunan, Hubei, Chongqing, and Guizhou, and cross-provincial travel to the song fair is very common; the singing also overlaps across provincial boundaries, with the same tune having variants in the mountain regions of several provinces, so the festival has become a common market day for the multi-ethnic mixed mountain areas. The division of labor within the song ground follows old practice: skilled singers stand at the center singing in antiphony, spectators watch from the outer circle and chime in at any time, exchanging singers, with lion dances, novelty acts, and percussion ensembles interspersed, and the drumbeat signals a shift of formation. Sacrificial rites still take first place: each village must first complete the sacrifices to heaven and earth, to ancestors, to heroes, and to the gods and spirits in its own stockade before setting out for the song ground, so one trip to the festival is in fact a journey in which sacrifice and entertainment proceed in parallel.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Miao Siyuebaguniang Festival.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The Miao Fourth Day of the Eighth Month Festival embodies the religious and cultural characteristics of the Miao people and is of great value for the study of Miao history and folk customs. Wu Niuzhen (from the official archival record of the associated inheritor): male, of the Miao ethnicity, born in August 1949, a native of Jishou City, Hunan Province. At twelve he learned lion dancing and novelty acts. At sixteen he learned the Miao percussion style known as dajiahuo. At eighteen he learned to play the Miao drum and sing Miao songs. From the 1980s to the present he has taken part in many large-scale Miao Fourth Day of the Eighth Month popular cultural activities. In 2003 and 2004 he transmitted the Miao ox-sacrifice (chuiniu) rite in the Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Hubei Province. He has completed the collection, collation, and re-creation of the techniques and methods of the Miao Fourth Day of the Eighth Month and of folk Nuo culture, and has inherited and developed more than thirty Nuo repertoire works. He has trained several hundred disciples. He is a representative inheritor of the Miao Fourth Day of the Eighth Month, an item of the fifth national-level batch of intangible cultural heritage. He won third place in the solo and paired Miao drum category at the Second Hunan Provincial Minority Games, and he has considerable influence among the local populace.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Wu Niuzhen 05-3015
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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