With the arrival of spring, people eagerly gear up for the planting season. On March 10th, Yao Autonomous County of Ruyuan, Shaoguan City, Guangdong Province, celebrated its 2024 "Second Lunar Month Beginning" Kaigeng Festival, marking the beginning of a year's spring plowing.
The "Second Lunar Month Beginning" festival, which is on the first day of China's second lunar month, is part of the "Double Beginning Festival" recognized as a provincial intangible cultural heritage, marking the start of the Yao people's farming season, with plowing in the second lunar month and harvesting in the tenth lunar month. During the "Second Lunar Month Beginning" festival, Yao communities celebrate by frying sticky rice cakes. Following this feast, they mend their agricultural tools, scatter rice cakes across the fields, and ignite candles and incense in homage to nature, seeking blessings for good weather and a prosperous harvest. A unique aspect of the celebration is the "Sealing the Birds' Beaks" practice, where rice cakes are fed to birds to prevent them from feasting on the seeds.
The event was packed with engaging activities, including traditional plowing rituals, showcases of intangible cultural heritage, and competitive Yao ethnic mountain songs. Running from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., it buzzed with energy and festivity.
During the festival, the air was alive with song and dance, enveloping everyone in the joyous spirit unique to this vibrant ethnic celebration, brimming with the genuine allure of Yao culture. In the heart of the spring wilderness, Yao priests and esteemed elder song masters set the plowing ceremony in motion, engaging in rituals like feeding birds and oxen, and offering prayers for well-being and abundance.
After the ceremony, the oxen were guided into the fields to begin plowing, etching the inaugural furrow of spring—a gesture that heralded the onset of the farming season and carried hopes for a bountiful and fragrant harvest.
In a parade displaying their rich intangible cultural heritage, variousgroupsincluding Yao priests, singers, dragon dancers, Yao dance troupes, farmers with traditional tools, individuals adorned in Yao attire, and spring ox dancers made their way to the fields. Their lively dances and unique songs, with the backdrop of traditional folk music, were a celebration of the Yao community's ethnic spirit of hard work, kindness, respect for nature, and agricultural wisdom.
The plowing ceremony was adorned with Yao mountain music, performed by inheritors of Yao folk music, including Zhao Xinrong, Zhao Caifu, and Deng Xiangying, recognized from national to provincial and local levels. Furthermore, prominent priests and Yao song masters such as Deng Liangyin and Deng Guilan, both provincial-level inheritors recognized for their contributions to the Double Beginning Festival and Yao attire respectively, were invited to enrich the atmosphere with authentic mountain duets. Their performances blended into a melody-rich backdrop, adding a hint of poetry to the lively spring day.
Source | Yangcheng Evening News
