Dong New Year
01 · Historical Records
The meaning of the Dong New Year can be taken from its name: the Dong people take gratitude and reunion as their two main threads, returning a share of the year's gains to the ancestors and to the neighbors of the stockade. The Dong New Year does not fall on any single fixed day; each village schedules it in turn according to old custom, and whichever village's turn it is hosts the celebration, so around Rongjiang it is a moving festival, held by every village without interruption year after year. The Dong New Year is also an occasion for cultural display: whatever plays, songs, and young people a village has are all brought out, making it once a year like a general review of the whole village.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Dong New Year is a traditional festival of the Dong people for thanking the ancestors for their protection; it is also a festival for family reunion and the celebration of the harvest, and at the same time a grand display of Dong culture. It is mainly distributed over the Dong areas of the northwest part of Rongjiang, including the seventy-two stockades of Leli and the forty-eight stockades of Zhaihao. As a traditional ethnic festival of the Dong people, the Dong New Year is held in rotation according to traditional rules in essentially every village where the Dong live in concentrated communities; it has broad popular participation and is transmitted among the people themselves. The most important rite of the Dong New Year is the "dousha" (that is, the singing of songs of ancestor worship); besides offering sacrifice to the ancestors, the purpose of the dousha is also a form in which the elders transmit the fine traditional culture of the people. Whether they be children, adults, or young people newly married, the elders all use the dousha to educate the next generation in how to conduct themselves, to distinguish right from wrong, to run a household industriously and frugally, and to respect the old and cherish the young.
Dusha, the ancestor song
The central rite of the festival is dusha, the collectively sung ancestor song, performed over several nights in the drum tower.
Moral instruction within the dusha
Through the dusha the elders teach the young how to live, judge right from wrong, manage a household and respect their elders.
A festival each village takes in turn
Villages take their turn in an old rotation, hosting guests in turn and visiting their neighbours, so that the year-end festival becomes a chain of mutual visits.
Songs carrying what documents cannot
With few written genealogies, origins and customs live in song, and dusha serves as both rite and the actual store of memory.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Dong New Year is mainly distributed in the areas of the seventy-two stockades of Leli and the forty-eight stockades of Zhaihao in the northwest part of Rongjiang; each stockade holds it in turn according to old rules, and not a single household or village is left out. This rotation gives the Dong New Year an inherently inter-village character: when it is another stockade's turn, the people of one's own stockade also go to observe the ceremony, so one stockade's New Year becomes a festival shared by several stockades; hence it has both broad popular participation and a transmission maintained entirely by spontaneous folk effort. The rotation system also spares another difficulty: the celebration need not be repeatedly mounted by each household, as costs and labor can be gathered within a single stockade, while the social obligations of those from other stockades who come to observe are smoothly kept up — it is held only once a year, so no one finds it burdensome.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Through village-by-village group New Year visits and the carrying out of various cultural activities, the Dong New Year transmits and promotes the ethnic culture. As a traditional festival of the Dong people, the Dong New Year carries much historical and cultural information about the people, and has an irreplaceable role to play in research into Dong history and culture and into the history of this region. The mode of transmission of the Dong New Year has one special feature: it relies neither on texts nor on a specially instituted master-apprentice system, but is carried along entirely by the festival itself. Whichever stockade's turn it is to hold the New Year, the whole stockade is present; the voices of the elders, the rules of the village, and the melodies of songs and dances are taken over year after year simply by the younger generation hearing them and watching them. Young people first join in the singing, then in the organizing, and finally, when their turn comes to preside, they are considered to have taken up a task that need never be written down.
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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