Yi New Year
01 · Historical Records
The Yi New Year originated in the sacrificial activities of the ancient Yi ancestors. The earliest record of the Yi New Year in Chinese-language documents is from the Tang dynasty.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Yi New Year, called 'Kurshi' in the Yi language, is a sacrificial and celebratory folk festival integrating many folk elements such as ancestor sacrifice, games and athletics, dining and entertainment, and dress regulations. It is held on an auspicious day chosen around November 20 each year. The Liangshan Yi New Year prevails mainly in 17 counties (and county-level cities) including Butuo, Meigu, Zhaojue, Ganluo, and Xide, among which the Yi New Year of Zhaojue, Meigu, Butuo, Xide, and other counties is the most representative and most richly colored. The Nanzhao-period poem 'Xinghui Jie' (Festival of the Returning Stars) by the ruler Piaoxin contains the lines: 'Unaware that the year is drawing to its end, I am moved to the depths by the Xinghui Festival; Yuanchang is of one heart with me, and descendants may worthily pass it on.' The Five Dynasties work Yuxi Bian Shi also records: 'The Nanzhao took the 16th day of the twelfth month as the Xinghui Festival.' The Yi New Year is a living witness to the ancient civilization of the Yi people and to ancestor worship, displaying the Yi people's reverence for their ancestors. The ideas of abundant harvests, thriving livestock and poultry, peace and safety for the people, respect for the elderly and care for the young, and joy and auspiciousness are fully embodied in the festival. The rich and complex folk phenomena of the Yi New Year reflect many cultural contents of Yi history and culture, economic life, ethical norms, customs and ritual institutions, folk costume, aesthetic taste, and taboos. The date of the Liangshan Yi New Year is set around November 20 of the Gregorian calendar with an auspicious day chosen, offsetting the Han New Year by an entire season; the year festival thus interlocks with the slack farming season and the time for slaughtering the New Year pig, and no separate holiday is needed. The Yi word 'Kurshi' is connected in its original meaning with sacrifice, and the day's program is arranged accordingly: ancestor sacrifice comes first, games and athletics follow, and wine, food, song, and dance come last, while at dispersal the elders of the clan still urge wine and see off guests in a tone of respect for the elderly. The dress regulations, taboos, and ethical norms within the year festival all appear in the same lively scene; to see it merely as a celebration would be to miss more than half of its content.
Fixing an auspicious day for the festival
The festival is not fixed to a solar date: an auspicious day is chosen around the twentieth of November, and that choice orders every other date in the season.
Ancestor worship and offerings
Known in Yi as Kush, the festival opens with sacrifice; only after the offerings may the games, the feasting and the singing begin.
Games and contests
Racing, wrestling and horn-bending are interspersed through the festival, the one time in the year the young men show their mettle.
The customs of ritual wine
Slaughtering the new-year pig, brewing and pouring ritual wine and honouring the elders all fall inside the festival; the order of precedence matters more than the play.
The seventeen-county area
Seventeen counties of Liangshan keep the festival, with Zhaojue, Meigu, Butuo and Xide regarded as the most complete in form.
The older name of the star-return festival
A Nanzhao poem on the star-return festival and a fifth-century record of the sixteenth of the twelfth month show the year-end observance is of long standing.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Distributed across the vast Yi regions of Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, and Guangxi. Within Liangshan Prefecture, the scope of observance takes Butuo, Meigu, Zhaojue, Ganluo, Xide, and 17 counties and cities as one region, among which the New Year customs of Zhaojue, Meigu, Butuo, and Xide are the most complete: day selection, ancestor sacrifice, wine rites, songs and poems, horse racing, and wrestling are all present, and the forms of costume and sacrificial vessels each have their own style. The Yi regions of Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, and Guangxi share the same customs with slight variants, each naming and performing the rites according to the local Yi language branch. The Xinghui Festival poem composed by Piaoxin of the Nanzhao period and the old custom of the 16th day of the twelfth month recorded in the Five Dynasties work Yuxi Bian Shi are precisely the old foundation for today's practice of setting the festival at the end of the twelfth month.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Through these plain, vivid scenes of life and humanistic information passed down since antiquity, one can trace the trajectory of Yi society's economic development and cultural-historical change. The festival is of important value for research in the humanities, including religious studies, anthropology, folklore studies, and sociology.
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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