Qiang New Year Festival
01 · Historical Records
Concealed in the alternative names of the Qiang New Year is a layer of calendrical information: the name Rimei coincides with the head of the year in the Qiang Pingyang calendar, while "Minor New Year" and "Harvest Festival" point out its place in the year — a settlement at year's end rather than the opening of the new year. The Pingyang calendar is not synchronized with the Han lunar calendar, so the festival mostly falls on the first day of the tenth lunar month and lasts three to five days; both calendars place this day at the turn from late autumn into early winter, showing that the same climatic transition was felt simultaneously in northwestern Sichuan and in the interior, and the festival therefore possesses a stability that crosses calendars. Three aims stand side by side — celebrating the harvest, sending blessings, and praying for peace: the harvest is a fact already in hand, peace is a hope not yet certain, and putting the two together precisely suits the mental ledger of year's end. The survivals of nomadic and hunting culture and the worship of the spirits of all things that appear in the festival show that beneath its agrarian festive content an earlier way of life is still carried on; studying this displacement in Qiang society is best entered through the annual festival.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Rimei Festival (the Qiang New Year) is also called the "Qiang New Year", the "Minor New Year", and the "Harvest Festival". It is a grand festival of the Qiang people, its activities centering on celebrating the harvest, sending blessings, and praying for peace. It is mainly prevalent in the broad Qiang settlement areas of the 23 townships of Mao County, Sichuan Province, and it is also transmitted in Qiang-distributed areas such as Wenchuan County, Li County, Songpan County, and Beichuan Qiang Autonomous County. The Rimei Festival takes its name from the Qiang Pingyang calendar; it is generally fixed on the first day of the tenth lunar month and lasts three to five days. In content, Qiang New Year activities mainly reflect the state of the early farming culture of the Qiang people, but in their forms of expression many survivals of nomadic and hunting culture and of the worship of the spirits of all things (animism) still appear. Whenever the Qiang New Year approaches, every village stockade holds grand celebrations presided over by a highly respected elder. Men and women, young and old, form circles on the lawn; first they sing and dance — popularly called "dancing the festive shalang" (a Qiang group dance) — then they open the zajiu (wine sipped through straws) and exchange delicacies with one another, jointly wishing a happy new year and reveling without restraint until deep night before going home fully satisfied.
The Qiang new year at Qiangfeng village
The new year is kept in Maoxian townships and in Wenchuan, Li, Songpan and Beichuan; at Qiangfeng village a ritual master presides and the sequence of rites is preserved there.
The Qiang new year on the Qiang calendar
Named for the Qiang solar calendar and falling on the first of the tenth lunar month, the new year sits in the same seasonal slot as the Chinese autumn harvest end.
Circle dance and shared wine
All ages form circles on the grass to dance the salang, then share zang wine and food until late at night, the dance and the drink forming the festival's core.
Sixteen passages of ritual chant
Born into a family of eleven ritual masters, Wang Zhisheng knows over forty ritual texts and can recite sixteen passages in the Qiang language.
The collection of Qiang ritual classics
He took part in a national project compiling the ritual classics of the Qiang, turning orally transmitted passages into published text beyond any single priest's memory.
Traces of older ways of life
Though agrarian in content, the festival still shows pastoral, hunting and animist traces, making the new year a useful point of entry into Qiang social change.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Wenchuan County is one of the transmission sites of the Qiang New Year; its festival customs join with the 23 townships of Mao County and with Li County, Songpan County, and Beichuan Qiang Autonomous County into one stretch, forming a New Year festival shared by the Qiang of northwestern Sichuan. The Qiang villages here are mostly distributed along river valleys and mountainsides, and in front of each village there is usually open ground able to hold the whole village, so dancing in circles requires no separate site; the pattern in which one village organizes the festival and neighboring villages come to offer congratulations is especially pronounced in the Wenchuan area. The Qiang New Year in Wenchuan is led by a shibi (Qiang ritual specialist) who presides over the rites and the mountain sacrifice. Wang Zhisheng was born into a shibi family, which includes eleven shibi in all; for many years he served as the presiding officiant of the Qiang New Year in Qiangfeng Village, mastering the ritual procedures and understanding the inner content of shibi culture. He has committed to memory more than forty shibi scriptures and can sing and recite sixteen passages of classic texts in the Qiang language. He once took part in the collecting and compiling of Qiang Shibi Classics, a key national publication project on the ancient books of ethnic minorities, and has actively carried out skill-transmission activities, teaching eleven disciples in all. The two identities of shibi lineage and village presiding officiant merge here, giving the Qiang New Year of Wenchuan a relatively high degree of procedural completeness.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Qiang New Year Festival · Qiang New Year Festival · Qiang New Year Festival.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The Qiang New Year is a precious cultural heritage of the Qiang people. It integrates belief, history, song and dance, and food and drink into one, and through its festival activities it expresses the Qiang people's national character of worshipping nature and their ancestors. It has research value in many fields, including ethnology, folklore studies, sociology, history, and cultural studies. Wang Zhisheng (recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): Male, of Qiang ethnicity, born in November 1934, native of Wenchuan County, Sichuan Province. Born into a shibi family, which includes eleven shibi in all. For many years he served as the presiding officiant of the Qiang New Year in Qiangfeng Village, mastering the ritual procedures and understanding the inner content of shibi culture; he has committed to memory more than forty shibi scriptures and can sing and recite sixteen passages of classic texts in the Qiang language. He once took part in the collecting and compiling of Qiang Shibi Classics, a key national publication project on the ancient books of ethnic minorities, organized and carried out by the Research Office for the Collation of Ancient Books of Ethnic Minorities of the State Ethnic Affairs Commission and the Sichuan Provincial Ethnic Affairs Commission. He has actively carried out skill-transmission activities, teaching eleven disciples in all. He is a representative inheritor of the Qiang New Year, a project of the third national-level batch of intangible cultural heritage.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Xiao Yongqing 03-1476
- Wang Zhisheng 03-1477
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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