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Guizhou: Rice and Silver
Oh, for the love of…we totally flaked on the Sister’s Meal Festival in Guizhou! Missed it by practically a lunar month. Sorry about that. What a party, and what a place – East Guizhou, as far from grubby old Beijing as the Blue Ridge Mountains are from grubby old Manhattan.
Mountain folk get a lot of bad PR from the lowland sophistos, on both sides of the Pacific. In America, they’re slack-jawed yokels who don’t swim far from their own gene pool. In China, they’re too busy singing and dancing to worry their simple minds with administrative affairs. Admittedly, the Miao of East Guizhou certainly do more singing and dancing than the Han majority. But the Sister’s Meal Festival proves they’ve solved some big problems we still haven’t sussed out here beneath the cloud cover.
Loneliness, for one thing. The Sister’s Meal Festival is a fun and friendly mating ritual, truly civilized in that no one gets hurt, at least not physically, and the whole community participates. One of the best places to witness the Festival is in Shidong, “Sidong” if you think Mandarin has too many sounds already, as the southwestern Chinese seem to. It’s a hillside village, 3 hours’ bumpy bus ride from Kaili, itself a kind of launch-point to the myriad minority settlements surrounding it.
Usually, Shidong is as peaceful and green as an allergy medicine commercial. Come mid-April or so, though, and all the neighboring hill folk start pouring in – on foot, by boat, and on the back of trucks. They’re hauling those giant canvas bags common to all Chinese traveling proletarian-class, in this case filled with silver ornaments and breath-taking embroidered dresses, with which to adorn the flowers of their families, their nubile daughters.
Massive silver headdresses, neckbands, chains, lockets, and bracelets ward off evil and bolster yin energy, while setting off a dazzling array of multihued skirts, blouses, aprons, and jackets. This is no passive fashion show, however. The young ladies will be linking hands for light-hearted song and dance with a serious purpose, the magical call and response Miao chanting that gauges a mate by his spirit, not his pedigree.
Well, at least not by which finishing school he went to. Some of the dances involve the whole community, with tribe and lineage featuring into the act. Nonetheless, physical attraction plays the lead role in getting new couples together, which seems logical enough anywhere else but in China. And according to universal law, it is the males who must play the proactive part.
At breaks in the dancing and singing, they offer little packets of sticky riceto the young ladies whose hearts they hope to win. If the guy has a shot, a gal will place a pair of chopsticks inside the rice and give the packet back. More often, however, there will be a single chopstick inside the returned rice, Miao code for the last thing a guy wants to hear besides “We’ll have to remove them both,”: “I like you as a friend.” For those poor Miao chaps with serious dental or body odor issues, the strongest rejection they face is receiving a chili from their intended. Beats having a lady laugh you off with her friends at the club, after you’ve bought them all drinks.
If you didn’t come to find love with a Miao maiden or swain, the jangling silver and whirling embroidery may get to be a bit much. Mosey through the all-day markets, which sell enough silver to make a Libertarian drool, at prices to shame those in Lijiang and Guilin. It won’t turn your skin green, either.
There are always the bullfights to watch, too. It’s not that cruel; bulls were born to lock horns. Supporting an industry that keeps cows in tiny pens, standing in their own filth, and pretending beef comes from the supermarket, now that’s cruel.
You’d think the dancing would wind down with the daylight, but the Miao are born with chronic Saturday Night Fever. Once the moon is up, it’s time for the Dragon Dance. Candles light up giant paper dragons, which whoosh through the crowds accompanied by drumming and fireworks, all in all enough to give a fire marshal an aneurism. Meanwhile, old friends catch up, elders swap stories, and new couples wander off into the shadows.
Ah, but you’ll have to wait almost another year now to see it. Or you could go now and just wait a few days. There are over 120 Miao festivals per year, few as grand as the Sister’s Meal, but all marked by the triple hallmarks of Miao graciousness: singing, dancing, and hospitality.
Plus, there’s always the Wuyang River nearby, waiting to sweep you off into country not quite as achingly Southern China as Guilin’s, but just as pristine, with a pleasant dash of ruggedness.
Drift on down past Zhenyuan town, to the Black Dragon Cave. Not another cave! Relax – it’s really a temple. Not another temple! Hey, this is an ancient architectural complex combining Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian shrines, the kind of co-religious harmony we in the “developed” world would do well to learn from.
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This place looks beautiful and the people are full of culture and tradition. It's so interesting to learn about the way things are done in far away places. -Mark
Xie xie for the footnote, Loren!
The pictures looks very beautiful,Overall Guizhou is a mountainous province however it is more hilly in the west while the eastern and southern portions are relatively flat.
It seems GuiZhou people like silver very much, but Silver is move popular in LiJiang.
Thanks,