Pingbian Huafanjie Festival

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The last festival for this trip is the Huafanjie Festival(coloue-rice festival), in tradition should be held at the 1st horse day on Lunar June, but for some reason...it delay until today. And in the old day each Zhuang village should held their own festival in their own date during Lunar June, but since 8 years ago the government was involved, money put in and they centralised in one village to celebrated the festival. each year before the date, villages has potential and capacity would applied for the right to held the festival, the government would choose the suitable one for the festival ground that year. And this year fall on Sanjiazhai about 10km away from Baihe, one of the hot valley in Pingbian. indeed...it was very very hot there!
What is Huafanjie? Some said it was to memorised the Zhuang heroic ancestor Nongchigao, he was leading the soldier repelling the invasion of the empire from the Central Kingdom, but was defeated and kept fighting while retreat. And the soldiers came through Baihe area around June, every villages they retreated through left behind many dead bodies. In later day when war was over people celebrated and dyed rice in red colour(bloody colour) to memorised and to remember the brutality of war, and each village made their memorial according to the date the soldier pass through their village, that was why different village celebrated it in different day. and later probably they invented more colour into the rice and became colour-rice festival. But it is also June Newyear for them, the calender year was half way through, summer was almost over and crops soon to be harvest. celebration should be made to pray for a good year, paid honest to their ancestors and asked for protection.
Sanjiazhai(@450m) lived the Nong Zhuang people, tradional dress are tight long sleeve shirt open in the middle, long plaited skirt, headband with silver studs and wrap up with dark turban, but now their daily dress is trousers and a plain shirt with an apron in front, and a towel like headdress. when asked what the festival was about, the answered was "to protect our tradition"! what an unique answer, well trained during party meeting I guess! anyways...the festival was totally corrupted, got all the ingradients that I hate( especially I was standing under the hot sun), the long and stupid propaganda speech, all the performance are in party red song or music, dance with Hindie music...and the hostess was in a Zhuang costume from Guangxi! The main event was washing the colour rice before cook, traditionally was a completition game for the local women, see who could prepared the best colour rice. I read this on internet and it sound interesting as the women will sing and play with water between each other. But now they skipped that and just put up an acting show for us...the photographiers. "we had prepared the rice yesterday" one woman said. damit...that was what I coming to see about this festival! next time should be here the day before! With P...the only westerner in sight, we attracted all the attention in the festival ground, and we had no problem got invited for meal and tasting the eye catching colour rice, "we dye each colour with different leaf from vegetable" the women ensuring us. the taste was great and the rice was soft to chew on. many tables had been prepared on the festival ground, each family provided one table of foods, villager join in after the officials from the county had eaten and gone(what the festival are supposedly for? for the Zhunag people or for the government???). People began to toast around each table and armed with red colour dye, smeared each other faces with hand prints, said the more colour you got the luckier you are. hehe...guess I wasn't that lucky I guess!

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