Guizhou Sisters' Rice Festival
The Sisters' Rice Festival or the Sister Festival, held annually by girls on the 15th day of the third lunar month, is one of the most active festivals of the Miao people in Guizhou Province of China. The date of the festival is different according to places. The ceremony is simple, unsophisticated, and distinctive and the Sister Festival in Shidong, Taijiang County is the most typical one. Girls, who are the center of the festival, invite their sweet hearts to eat Sister Rice and send keepsakes to each other, and get engaged, which displays the fact of love between the lads and the girls during the course of changing from the matriarchal clan society to the patriarchal clan society. It provides a dazzling display of local dress, and a lot of entertainment including clamor of drums, firecrackers, canoeing contest, bullfighting, horse racing, singing and dancing competitions and even beauty contests. The interaction between the tranquil and soothing rural life and the modern tours seeking nature are likened to "the festival hidden in the pistil", which is known as "the oldest oriental Valentine's Day" and is becoming a brilliant landscape in the modern tourism economy in Southwest China.
In 2010, the Sisters' Rice Festival will be held in Shidong Village from April 28 to 30. As it was, the fesitival will attract many experts on folklore,tourists and shutterbugs from home and abroad.
For more info and tours about the Guizhou Sisters' Rice Festival please visit http://www.chinafacttours.com/
Photo:
http://www.prlog.org/
