Shaoguan Milk Source Yao "February Dynasty" festival to make fried rice dumplings to sacrifice ancestors

Source: Nanfang Daily

Gome (the elder who is best at singing Yao songs) takes the lead in loosening the soil to show the beginning of a year of cultivation. Courtesy of the correspondent

Nanfang Daily News (Reporter/Pan Junyu Correspondent/Deng Xionghua Li Qiao) The first day of the second month of the lunar calendar is the "February Dynasty" festival of the Yao people in Shaoguan, also known as the Feng bird Tsui Festival, that is, the beginning of the Yao people's annual sowing and cultivation. On March 13, the "February Dynasty" festival, the Luyuan Yao people make fried rice dumplings to sacrifice their ancestors and worship nature, and they will make rice dumplings, fried rice dumplings, and bird-shaped rice dumplings scattered in the field, pasted on the top of farm tools and sticks, and lit candles and incense on the foundations of the fields, praying for the new year's wind and rain, abundant grain, and abundant food.

According to the staff of the Ruyuan Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center, in order to celebrate the "February Dynasty", the Yao people hold various activities before the first day of February in the lunar calendar every year. For example, on March 11, the "February Dynasty" Ploughing Festival was held in the new village of Dongping Town, where Yao compatriots, "intangible heritage" inheritors and social people who love Yao culture gathered together to participate in the activity. In the form of singing Yao songs, the scene praised the moving scene of the sons and daughters of the Yao family in the new era of unity and progress and the construction of a beautiful Yao township, and the participants on the scene dressed in Yao costumes and danced the traditional dance of the Yao ethnic group to celebrate this traditional festival together. Under the guidance of non-hereditary inheritors, everyone started the journey of the new year together in the form of singing and dancing.

The "Two Dynasties Festival" (the "February Dynasty" and the "October Dynasty") is the seventh batch of provincial intangible cultural heritage representative projects in Guangdong Province. Through the traditional festival of the Yao "February Dynasty", tell the story of The Yao Township of Ruyuan, carry forward the traditional virtues of loving labor, stimulate the entrepreneurial spirit of the officers, and provide strong cultural support and spiritual motivation for The Ruyuan to strive to walk in the forefront of the national minority autonomous counties.