Shibaoshan Song Fair
01 · Historical Records
The Shibaoshan Song Festival is a grand ethnic traditional festival of the Bai region, which has been handed down to the present day with a history of more than a thousand years.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The song festival is held each year from the twenty-seventh day of the seventh lunar month to the first day of the eighth lunar month at Shibaoshan, in Jianchuan County, Dali Prefecture, Yunnan Province. On this occasion Bai people from Jianchuan, Eryuan, Lijiang, Dali, Lanping and other places gather in one place, plucking strings and answering in song to seek partners, and at the same time they may burn incense and worship Buddha at the various temples and take part in folk activities such as the "Azhali" Buddhist rites, the worship of the central benzhu (local patron deity) of the Bai region, and the pilgrimage to the stone-carved female vulva known as "Ayangbai". The song festival centres on improvised antiphonal singing, bringing together string-plucking and singing, prayer to deities and worship of Buddha, benzhu (local patron deity) veneration and seeking partners through song, and displaying the character of harmonious coexistence among multiple cultures.
Plucking strings and answering in song
The liveliest part of the fair: each side answers in its own local dialect with improvised lyrics.
The late-summer song fair
The fair runs from the 27th of the seventh month to the first of the eighth, making it a several-day gathering.
Worship at the local shrine and the A Yang Bai image
Attendees visit the village shrine, join the Azali Buddhist rite, and pay respects at the A Yang Bai figure.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Participants in the Shibaoshan Song Festival come from Bai villages in Jianchuan County itself and in the Eryuan, Dali, Lijiang and Lanping area; those who come from farther afield to attend mostly travel in groups, stay at the foot of the mountain for three to five days, and then disperse. Visitors from various places divide roughly into several layers on the mountain: those who first enter the mountain temples to burn incense and worship Buddha circle past the mountain gate to the benzhu temple, catch one of the Azhali Buddhist rites, and then go on to worship at the stone-carved female vulva Ayangbai; another group does not go up into the temple halls at all, but pairs up directly on the slope among the trees to pluck strings. Antiphonal singing excels in improvisation: accents of the Bai language and string tunes differ from place to place, and even for the same song title the way of singing varies; people from one place strike up the tune first and people from another follow with the answering phrase, and whether one can keep the rhyme and keep up with the lines is decided on the spot. The song festival has thus become an occasion where singers from different places quietly vie with one another. The religious sites and the singing grounds on the mountain are not cut off from one another. The streams of those burning incense and of those singing criss-cross repeatedly in front of the temple and on the slope; some sing half a phrase and then crouch down to add a handful of incense ash. This scene in which belief and entertainment are mixed together is precisely the normal state of social life in the Bai mountain regions. Older singers have mostly accumulated their songs through repeated attendance at the festival, while newcomers are led by the older generation to answer a few phrases during the fair, gradually learning to distinguish the tune registers of different places. Those attending the festival mostly invite one another by village as the unit and travel in groups along the way; after reaching the mountain they lodge with households beside the temple or in the houses of relatives. This temporary settlement bound by village community and kinship is precisely the organisational basis that allows the song festival to continue for days on end and to reconvene the following year.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The Shibaoshan Song Festival is the cradle in which Bai folk songs are born and a base for their development and dissemination; it gives full display to the creative genius of the Bai people and provides precious research material for disciplines such as anthropology, ethnology, history, archaeology and aesthetics.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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