Bull fighting and house racing in Duan Festival

  
Dragon dancing and Shui women wearing traditional costume in Duan Festival

The Shui script, the Duan Festival of the Shui ethnic group, and the Shui horsetail embroidery have been included in the first batch of China's non-tangible cultural heritage list, an official announced recently.

The Shui script is the written language of the Shui ethnic group. Together with the Dongba script, it is one of the two hieroglyphs that are still in use today. The script still plays an important part in local people's social life, and is used widely on occasions such as funerals, people's outing, festivals, divination practice, or farming activities.

Duanjie, or Duan Festival, is a grand festival for the Shui ethnic group held once every year between August and October. Major activities held during the festival include worshipping and horse racing. The festival shows that the Shui people originally lived in the north part of China in ancient times.

The horsetail embroidery is a primitive, yet lively art form, which some people call it a "living fossil." It serves as a valuable tool for people to study the Shui people's folk culture, folk life, and totem worship.

An expert on Shui script, Pan Chaolin, research fellow of the Guizhou Ethnic Minority Institute, says that due to the historical changes and industrialization process, the Han culture has spread far and wide throughout China. This has caused great changes in the social environment in which the Shui script survives, and few people could write such characters now. The inclusion of the Shui folk culture and its artistic form in China's non-tangible cultural heritage list will play a positive role in the protection and study of the Shui culture.

  
Paying attribute to ancestors in Duan Festival

Parade in Duan Festival, with the boys carrying the Shui people's house

  
Shui people's housetail embroidery & Shui woman's silver necklace

Housetail Embroidery

Editor: Wing