The year of melon is the biggest festival of Shui people. During the festival, every family in the water village picks pumpkins and sacrifices them to their ancestors. The necessary dishes on the table are also pumpkins. To celebrate the festival with melon as the theme! It must make you curious - why is it called the Year of Melon? What kind of festival is it? Why are pumpkins so important in festivals? What customs do Shui people have when celebrating the year of melon? Let's go to Dadi Shui Village, Leishan County, Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture to have a look and feel the different festival atmosphere.      

The Pumpkin Year is the grandest festival of the Shui ethnic group. During the festival, pumpkins are harvested and offered as sacrifices to their ancestors, and they are essential dishes during this time.

The celebration of the festival may pique your curiosity—why is it called the Pumpkin Year? Why is the pumpkin so important? What customs does the Shui ethnic group observe during the Pumpkin Year? Let's visit Dadi Shui Township in Leishan County and experience a unique festive atmosphere.

Shui people held a sacrificial parade in the year of melon.

Every year during the Gourd Festival, Dadi Shuizu Township in Leishan County will hold a grand festival to welcome guests from afar and show the strong ethnic customs of Dadi Township.

At the event, the Shui people will play the leading role, and the Miao, Han, Yao and Dong people who live in Dadi Township will also participate in the event. Everyone dressed up and went on a parade to show the dress culture of ethnic minorities; Display the sacrificial culture and festival culture of the Shui people in the form of performance on the Lusheng Stadium at the entrance of the township government; Finally, we will play Lusheng, drink rice wine, perform songs and dances, and invite all guests to share the festive atmosphere of the festival.

The whole activity shows the strong ethnic customs of Dadi Township, but the Shui nationality and the year of melon of Shui nationality are the absolute main line. During the parade, four strong men of the Shui nationality lifted a large pumpkin with a bamboo pole stretcher and walked in the forefront, leading the whole parade team; The main venue of the event is also full of pumpkins piled like hillbags; The performance began with a sacrifice, and the pumpkin became the main sacrifice on the sacrificial platform... These details cast a layer of mystery on the "Year of Melon".

Shuizu Gua Year Tour in Dadi Township, Leishan County.

What kind of festival is the Year of Melon? Yang Xiubiao, the inheritor of Shui culture in Dadi Shui Village, has unveiled the mystery to us: the year of melon is also called Duanjie, and the water language is called "borrowed". "Duan", which means "the beginning of the year" or "the new year", is a grand festival to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new, celebrate the harvest, visit relatives and friends, and worship ancestors.

It is said that the reason why it originated from pumpkin is that pumpkin symbolizes harvest. In order to be grateful for the gift of land, Shui people use pumpkin to sacrifice, celebrate the harvest of grain and pray for good weather in the coming year. It is also said that an ancestor of the Shui nationality climbed on the roof to pick pumpkins as a New Year's product during the New Year's Day, accidentally fell down with people and melons and died, and later generations sacrificed pumpkins to the old man.

Yang Xiubiao introduced that the Shui people spent two days in the year of melon, the first day of sacrifice and the second day of festival. If there are three dog farm days in the lunar September every year, the dog farm day in the middle will be selected for sacrifice and the festival will be postponed to the next day. If there are only two dog farm days in the month, the first dog farm day will be selected for sacrifice and the festival will be postponed to the next day.     

The folk song and dance performance in the Shuizu melon year activity.

There are many taboos in the sacrificial activities of the year of melon. For example, on the day of the sacrifice, there should be no celebration, no singing, no playing musical instruments, no eating meat, no laughing and swearing, no quarrel between husband and wife, and no elders can beat and scold children. In short, it should be solemn, courteous, and there should be no disharmonious factors. During the sacrifice, the bowls and plates should be washed clean, and the items on the altar should not be tasted. The sacrifices on the altar are vegetarian dishes, mainly pumpkins, but also melons, fruits, beans and fish. Yang Xiubiao explained, "In the eyes of the Shui people, fish live in the water and can be regarded as vegetables." When the sacrificial offerings are ready, we should invite the respected old man in the village to come home and let him recite the sacrificial words. The sacrificial table can only be moved after a stick of incense is burned.

"There are two sacrificial activities in the year of melon, one is before dinner on the day of sacrifice, and the other is before dawn after midnight." Yang Xiubiao said that everyone can celebrate the festival after dawn. Family and friends get together, exercise martial arts, drink and eat meat, and say auspicious words. Villagers will also go to their own fields to fish on the spot, and the whole family will eat grilled fish in the fields, Welcome the New Year with a festive atmosphere.   

Article | Wang Chenhao

Figure | Qiao Qiming

New Media Editor | Xu Jieyu

Second instance | Zhang Fen

Third instance | Zhao Lin