[Custom] Lusheng Festival of Miao and Dong Minorities

Area: Jingzhou Autonomous County, Huaihua City, Hunan Province

Name: Lusheng Festival of Miao and Dong Minorities

No. : Ⅷ-9

Category: folk customs

Year of Application: 2006

Applicant: Jingzhou Miao and Dong Autonomous County, Huaihua City

Level: provincial

file photo: hunan.gov.cn

Lusheng Festival of Miao and Dong minority ethnic groups, is popular in the southwest of Hunan Province, and is the largest one annually held on the 15th  of the seventh lunar month.

The festival has evolved in long years of Miao and Dong people's farming and agricultural living customs. With the entertainment provided to god and to humans being main contents, and dance activities being the carrier, Lusheng Festival is a traditional folk culture with various activities ,including history, religion, folklore, art, trade and so on.

During the festival, wearing short Duijin or Youdajin (a kind of Chinese-style jacket with buttons down the front) and trousers, packing green headscarves and girdling sashes around waists, the men flood to the venue, with Lusheng, Suona (Chinese clarinet) and bronze drum in hands; while the girls follow, talking and laughing. They dress in embroidered clothes and silver ornaments, also packing green headscarves and girdling embroidered waistbands. People dance to the music of the Lusheng.

It is said that Miao people also called the Lusheng tube as Kongming tube, as Zhuge Liang (a Three Kingdoms strategist whose Chinese style name is Kongming) taught them how to make it. According to the records, the lusheng, which was widespread in the southwest as early as Tang Dynasty, enjoys a long history.

Lusheng Festival, representing the ancient sacrificial culture and carrying the significant historical and cultural information of Miao and Dong ethnic groups, is not only an important platform for the maintenance and continuance of the Miao and Dong culture; but also a collection of the folk culture of Miao and Dong, gathering almost all categories of performance arts of Miao and Dong, which are popular in Qiaoli, Jingzhou County, southwest of Hunan Province, and fully demonstrating the varied existence conditions and high artistic achievements of Miao and Dong folk art. It has become an important tradition for local people to enhance cohesion.