Caishan Festival of the Miao(Hmong) in Guizhou

　　　Caishan festival is a traditional festival of the Miao(Hmong) minority group in the north of Guizhou. Caishan festival is also given a name “Cai Shan Ping” or “Cai Shan Bao”, it’s held during February-the period of Chinese Spring festival.
There are more than 10 thousand people coming to join the festival, many of them are young people(boys and girls). Among them, the majority is Miao, the rest are Yi, Buyi, Gelao and Han, etc.
　　　3 or 5 village heads are selected to be the person taking charge of the festival. While the festival arrives, a flower pole(decorated pole or tree) wrapped with dark blue, blue and white cloth is placed in the center of the festive ground. Miao people, whether young or old, are dressing them with finest holiday bests and coming to participate the festival with different musical instruments such as Lusheng, Mangtong(a kind of bamboo flute musical instrument), harmonica and tree leaves by which young Miao boys can produce nice sound music. They come from various villages and directions and get together at the festival ground. 　

　　　When the festival ceremony is started, the first is to sing a Miao(Hmong) song call “Cai Shan Song”—stepping on the mountain slope, after the song, the ethnic groups play Lusheng and all kinds of musical instruments they brought with. When the climax arrives, young boys usually play a Lusheng dance called “Earthworm rolling with sands”, this is a dance like acrobatics, and it’s very difficult to dance which need an experienced and excellent dancer, and of course, endless warm claps are always surely given to those dancers. Except for those interesting activities, the ethnic groups also play other games such as climbing the flower pole, kicking the corn shuttlecock, etc. Through those activities, young boys and girls can express their love and feelings to each other; old people can meet their relatives and friends to talk about their lives and farm works.
　　　Here the legend goes, long long ago, there was a local official at the region called “Houshan”, he let his daughter stay at home days and nights, he didn’t allow her to go out of the house. There was a magpie( a bird ) singing songs every morning, so she heard the songs, while the time passed by, she was ill, and couldn’t drink any water and eat food(rice), then she became more and more emaciated. Finally the official Mr. Mo found the reason why his daughter was ill, the sickness of her was caused by a magpie spirit, formerly, his daughter was puzzled by the magpie spirit. The official Mo sent his attendants to discuss the problem with the Miao village head, the Miao village head told his son about the story of the girl’s, then the young man killed the magpie and make medicine with the bird, and gave to this girl to take. After that, she was cured. The official was very happy and felt grateful, his daughter loved this young Miao man deeply while seeing him at the first time of meeting him, she admired him because of his bravery and talents, then she was allowed to marry the young Miao man. Her father asked people to plant a tree with one thousand roots and 10 thousand branches on the hill slope, so his daughter can play Lusheng, sing songs , etc with the young Miao man every day there or keep shelter from the sun.
　　　To commemorate the young couple, the Miao(Hmong) people decided to dance on this mountain slope for the festival, thus the traditional of the festival is passed down.