Festival keeps alive Yi customs
Print Edition
SURROUNDED by green hills and fluttering flags, young women wearing silver headdresses and colorful costumes filed onto the stage, dancing hand in hand as sounds of singing filled the valley.
For centuries, the ethnic Yi people in southwestern China celebrate the year’s biggest holiday, the Torch Festival, for three days during the sixth lunar month.
Traditionally an occasion for matchmaking with young men and women searching for potential spouses, the festival is an occasion to maintain Yi’s customs at a time of rapid change.
In an effort to boost growth and lift living standards, China aims to resettle millions of rural people in cities in coming years. Modernization has already brought transformation to the remotest area of southwestern Sichuan Province where roughly 2 million Yi people live, with a new airport and railroad networks crisscrossing the hills.
At this year’s festival, an amplifier blared songs and a stream of commentary played out in Mandarin. Spectators watching the festival wore baseball caps backward and cargo shorts. Women with dyed hair snapped selfies with the girls as they adjusted their delicate and complex costumes.
At night, revellers and tourists carried long torches past a tall bonfire shooting sparks into a rainy sky, and dreadlocked shamans put themselves through painful rituals with scorching hot metal implements.
It is increasingly rare for young Yi people to don the traditional clothes. “This is the first time I am wearing a traditional costume,” said one girl. “I really like wearing it. At other festivals we don’t wear it.”
Some women carried yellow umbrellas and sported long skirts of red and gold, others wore tinkling metal ornaments, embroidered belts, and hats shaped like chandeliers.
Wenze Mochen, 20, said she had her costume since she was a child. “My mother had people make it for me,” she said. “It usually takes a few months to make one.”
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