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Song and dance valued by group
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POURING water on people is never an insult for Dai people in southwestern China, but a friendly act to spread happiness and luck on their new year. Those who get soaked on the day are anticipated to become the luckiest ones in the coming year, with all those blessings.
The Dai ethnic group, with a population of 1,261,311, mainly lives in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Region in Yunnan Province, enjoying plentiful rainfall and fertile land.
The Dai ethnic group originated with the “Baiyue” people widely scattered in the south and southeast of China. The Dai people were called “Mangman,” “Jinchi” or “Baiyi” and ruled by Nanzhao and Daili local regimes successively in the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) and Song Dynasty (AD 960-1279).
The Dai language belongs to the Chinese-Tibetan language family and has three major dialects. It is written in an alphabetic script.
Thanks to the area’s favorable climate, Dai people mostly live on agriculture and horticulture. Local products include rice, sugar cane, coffee, hemp, rubber, camphor and a wide variety of fruit. Xishuangbanna is the home of China’s famous Pu’er tea. The dense forests produce large amounts of teak, sandalwood and medicinal plants, and are home to wild animals including elephants, tigers and peacocks.
Dai people eat rice or sticky rice as their staple food, and “bamboo rice” is one of the most popular dishes. The rice roasted in bamboo tubes emits a delicious bamboo fragrance.
They prefer sour and spicy flavors. They eat beef, chicken, duck, fish and shrimp. Cabbages, carrots, bamboo shoots and beans are among the popular vegetables. The Dai people also make dishes with spiders, cicadas and ant eggs.
Most Dai villages are built at the bottom of mountains or near rivers. Rows of bamboo houses with phoenix bamboo and palm trees growing nearby are common in Dai villages. The houses are usually two stories, with the upstairs for people and downstairs for livestock. The roofs are traditionally covered by couch grass.
Men traditionally wear collarless, tight short jackets, with the opening at the front or along the right side, and long baggy trousers. In winter, they drape a blanket over their shoulders. They traditionally wear black or white turbans. Tattooing is a common tradition. When a boy reaches the age of 11 or 12, a tattoo artist is invited to tattoo his body and limbs with designs of animals, flowers, geometric patterns or the Dai written script.
Traditionally, women wore tight jackets with round collars, narrow sleeves and buttons down the front. The skirts are usually colorful and tight. Most Dai women wear hair knots on the top of the head, adorned by a comb or flowers.
Dai people are good at singing and dancing. The traditional musical instruments include the elephant-foot drum, bronze gong, clarinet and hulusi, a wind instrument. The peacock dance is the best known among the Dai people.
Dai people worship the peacock as a symbol of beauty, good fortune, happiness and kindness. The Dai love observing and imitating the moves of the peacock, and combine the movements into their dance.
Elephant-foot drums are made of a carved mango or ceiba trunk covered with cowhide. It looks like an elephant foot, and can be made into different sizes classified into long, medium, or short drum.
The elephant-foot drum dance involves the dancer playing the drum while dancing. The dancer with a long drum usually appears graceful, while those with a medium-sized drum look more vigorous with broad and sweeping movements, and the one with a short drum shows movements that are more flexible and lively.
Most Dai people believe in the Hinayana school of Buddhism, which emphasizes salvation through personal efforts. It has posed a profound influence on their politics, economy, culture and arts. Buddhist temples are to be found in almost every village. There is a stupa, or dome-shaped structure, in bigger temples, and sometimes a group of stupas. The white body of the stupa is like a silver bamboo shoot breaking through the soil, giving them the name of “bamboo shoot stupa.”
The Water Splashing Festival is the biggest festival for the Dai, and it is celebrated between the sixth and seventh month of the Dai calendar (around April). The celebration usually lasts for three days, with the first day equivalent to New Year’s Eve, when people hold dragon boat races and set off fireworks.
Events like heaping-up sand and cockfights are often held on the second day. And on the third day, the equivalent to New Year’s Day, the Dai get up early to worship the Buddha. Girls wash the dust off Buddha statues with water and flowers. They splash water on each other while singing and dancing for good wishes.
Dai
Population: 1,261,311 (2010 national census)
Distribution: Yunnan Province
Language: Dai Language
Religion: Buddhism
Food: Rice, beef, chicken, duck, fish, shrimp, cabbage, carrot, bamboo shoots and beans
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