| Ancestor Worship In Chinese Miao Culture |
| Written by Clare Liu | |
| Saturday, 18 July 2009 | |
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Occuring only once every 13 years, the secret Guzang Festival is an exciting time for the Chinese Miao people to worship their ancestors. In the Chinese language, the word "Gu" means a bull, and "Zang" means innards of an animal. During the festival, a series of ceremonies like slaughtering bulls, beating drum are held.
Occuring only once every 13 years, the secret Guzang Festival is an exciting time for the Chinese Miao people to worship their ancestors. In the Chinese language, the word "Gu" means a bull, and "Zang" means innards of an animal. During the festival, a series of ceremonies like slaughtering bulls, beating drum are held. An indispensable part of this festival is beating drums. The Miao use maple wood to make their drums, and cover both ends of the drums with cowhide. They believe the soul of their ancestors lives in this big drum. So during the festival, people beat the drum very loudly to awake their ancestors, who come and attend their great worshiping ceremony. The Miao use two different types of drums for their festival: double drums and single drums. The double drums comprise two identical drums which are 170 cm long and 30 cm in diameter. The double drums are usually kept by a couple who has been married for a long time but doesn't have a child. They believe worshiping the double drums can bring them children. On the day of festival, the double drums are taken out and used for the ceremony. The single drum is smaller than the double drums. The Miao make a new single drum for each GuZang festival. After the festival is over, the single drum is left in a cave until it rots. In the August before a GuZang festival, people take the old single drum out of the cave and hold a praying ceremony. Then they start to make a new single drum. Two years before the festival, an elderly and respectable man is selected as the leader, who officiates at the worshiping ceremony. The man is in charge of picking up the sacred bulls. The sacred bulls are fed with good food until the ceremony, and nobody is allowed to use the bulls for farming. The leader wears a special costume and is quite conspicuous during the festival. He wears violet clothes, with some dried fish bound around his head. This indicates their ancestors ever lived along the Yangtze river in east China and made a living on fishing. On the first few days of the festival, people sing, dance, and hold numerous banquets to feast friends, neighbors, and relatives. Anyone who visits their village is warmly welcomed! They have meat and bean curd, but they can't eat vegetables. The festival lasts 13 days. There are some more exciting things happened in the Miao GuZang festival, so visit my website to learn it now! The Article Author: Author C. Liu has been studying sterling silver jewelry, for years. She occasionally endorses certain Miao artisans. Click over to her website to view some excellent unique silver jewelry. |
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