Guizhou Province, Festivals, April 2007

In April, Clayton and I returned to Guizhou to photograph a "Small Flowery Miao" festival called "Tiaohuachang". This particular festival is an opportunity for people to flirt, catch up with old friends and make some new friends ('friends with benefits' if you know what I mean). This girl was very popular with the boys.

Sweet friends.

Driving through a small town, we passed the tomb of the local town god -- this woman was doing brisk business in slaughtering chickens as offerings to the god/ancestor. The blood and some feathers were smeared on the tomb and then the chicken was taken home to have for dinner.

Another form of offering -- burning "ancestor money" and incense.

Young woman working on embroidery in the "Long Horn Miao" village

Members of the "Long Horn Miao" minority, these two ladies put on their festival clothes and showed us how they put up their hair which is wrapped around a long, bow-shaped piece of wood. Traditionally they would have used only hair that was braided but many of the women we saw supplemented the hair with black yarn.

Miao woman in market

Driving towards Shidong town, we passed through the village of Laotun. We saw a crowd of people gathering and fortuitously stopped -- fortuitous for two reasons. First, there was an absolutely spectacular little festival/celebration going on and the costumes were amazing. Second, part of the festivities included horse racing and just seconds after we stopped, a horse came galloping madly around the corner, almost hitting the car!

The Miao girls are dressed in the family's silver ornaments, the more the better. It's a way of showing how prosperous the family is.

Detail of festival outfit

Generally the unmarried girls wear the ornaments and we were told that they are often used as dowries.

Detail of the beautifully embroidered jackets worn by the women. Depending on the design/complexity, the embroidery can take over a year to complete. Festival outfits in pristine condition can sell for thousands of USD.

Stopping in Nanhua, we were lucky to find a performance being conducted for another group of tourists.

The big finale of the performance.

Stopping in Datang, home of the "Short Skirt Miao", yet another performance was being conducted for a different group of tourists. You can see that each group of Miao have varying festival outfits.

"Short Skirt Miao" woman, wearing her hair traditionally.

Another "Short Skirt Miao" so named because they traditionally wore very short skirts (you can see the pleats, over her trousers). Originally, trousers weren't worn though....