The Flowery Mountains Festival is celebrated by the Miao people, living predominantly in Yunnan province, between the second and seventh day of the first lunar month. It is also known as the Festival of Treading the Flowery Mountains and thousands of Miao will hold various activities to celebrate this festival on open hillsides among their villages.
The focus of the festival is the ‘flowery pole’ which is usually made from long and straight trunks of either pine or cypress. Around a metre from the top of this pole are hung lusheng (a kind of wind instrument), sweets, colourful flags and prizes. The person who volunteers to get up before sunrise to set all of this up is widely recognised as someone with a good heart. This is the same person who declares the festival officially started and toasts the people at the festival. Firecrackers, drums and gongs follow.
The festival site resembles a sea of colour, singing and dancing; folk singing, lion dancing, lusheng dancing and bullfighting are traditional activities.
Young Miao people can find lovers here; a man will present his lover with waistbands and puttees which have been embroidered with flowers; a girl will give hand-embroidered turbans and scarves.
The Miao in southern and northeastern Yunnan province celebrate on the sixth day of the sixth lunar month because of the legend of ancient Miao being distressed by the suffering of their ancestors. It was on this date that the ancestors once appeared to them and said they should not be so distressed but instead they should be happy, dance and play lusheng. Then a flower fell from heaven onto a tree on a hilltop and everyone danced, sang and played the lusheng. The harvest that year was good.
The celebrations now include all these activities and more; the winner of the flowery pole contest wins a pig’s head and good wine.
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