Santai Saizhuangjie

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"Our Saizhuangjie(fashion festival)could date back 200 years ago ... and was 20 years ahead of the developing of fashion in Paris....." It was part of the opening speech of the Saizhuangjie in Santai. but Lud and the Chinese girl we met there both said the Saizhuang merely began around the 1980's!
Came back to Santai after 5 years, beside the road had been well paved and couple of guesthouse available for choice, a new festival ground link with unfinished ring road, there wasn't much change in town, and the old Santai actually still the same...nothing had change! we came 2 days early because worried about accomodation as there was only one place to stay 5 years ago, so we was glad when we saw couple of signs. "200 yuan" was the replied when asked for a room, the owner said it will be the same in all the other gueathouse, still we went checked out all the rest of the places, either fully booked or yes...the steep price from 150 to 200. Finally with a much friendly owner we got a room with common bath for 100 yuan, best bargain we could get!
Festival happened on the same day of the market, so it attracted much more traders, both sides of the river in old Santai cramped fit with vendors. I could still recognised couple of the faces there, wish I had their fotos here with me and could give them a copy! The Yi still the same with thier eye-hurting glitter and strong colour costume, especially today is festival, many women came with headdress, but now I noticed many costume were stitched up with machine made patterns, there even one shop in town had an embroidery machine pumped up rolls after rolls of pattern, well...modernisation finally arrived I guess!!!
The festival was the standard type, couple of speeches before couple of performances, actually...most of the performance were great, the ceremomial dance, the traditonal Meige singing and performing with different musical instruments. excepted the stupid fashion show with ugly minority village clown like costume, no wondered they changed the name Saizhuang to Fuzhuang festival, which is more a costume show than a costume competition. In addition they added another element to promoted the local walnut which is actually rather tasty, but I didn't seen any merchant here for the business, guessed the effort was in vain! And in between the festival, there actually a film-crew there making a movie, kind of love triangle story a weatern boy and girl and a local young man in the Yi land, so...we all(including all the locals) was being forced into part of the movie back ground. At night the local gathered in the festiavl ground, dance hand in hand around a small bonfire with coouple of guys pulling at the erhu in monotonic melody, it was fun for a while, but after watching them for an hour in the same movement and same music, "let's go" I said to Lud. That was the festival, I wasn't disappointed, I didn't expected anything more than just a show and colourful costume. beside I was more than happy to caught the sunny weather other than the pissing climate in chaosing Yuanyang.

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