Yi Yi

 

1. Overview

The Yi nationality is a nationality formed by the continuous integration of the ancient Qiang people in the Hehuang area of northwest China and the indigenous tribes in the process of long-term development. The total population ranks seventh after Zhuang, Manchu, Hui, Miao, Uygur and Tujia. There are many branches of the Yi nationality, most of which call themselves "Nuosu", "Nasu", "Nie Su" and so on.

According to historical records, the time when the Yi ancestors entered the Wenshan region in large numbers was as far away as the Tang Dynasty 1200 years ago. The Qiubei Yi is one of the earliest indigenous peoples in the territory, with nearly 100000 people mainly belonging to the Black Yi, Bo, Sani and Pula clans. Black and white Yi are mainly distributed in 359 villages in Shuanglong Camp, Guanzhai, Badao Post, Japanese, willing to give up, putty, punch, bark and other townships. Sani is mainly distributed in Badao Post, Shuanglong Camp and Japanese Village. Servant is mainly distributed in Tianxing and Pingzhai villages. The Yi people in the territory are characterized by large dispersion and small settlements.

 

2, Water Yi Family

Qiubei is rich in water resources and grassland resources. The Yi people here mainly cultivate corn and rice, and are engaged in animal husbandry production. Economic crops include flue-cured tobacco, pepper, lotus root, grape, rape and so on, which belong to mixed agricultural economy.

The Puzhehei scenic area is surrounded by Yi villages such as Xianrendong Village and Puzhei Village, which are inhabited by many Yi ethnic groups such as Sani. The Sani people here are perhaps the only Yi people living by the lake in China. After the people born in the mountains came to Puzhehei, they learned to punt fishing. It is said that they are the descendants of Ashima, and Puzhehei is the secret land that Ashima discovered accidentally after he fled. They have stayed in Puzhehei for generations, living near the water, fishing and sailing into the boat, presenting a picture of peace and tranquility and harmony between man and nature.

 

3Clothing-wearing history, embroidering myth

There are many branches of the Yi nationality and rich traditional costumes, including Liangshan, Chuxiong, Honghe and Sichuan and Guizhou. In the long-term life practice, the Yi people show their feelings for nature and national beliefs in their own costumes, and use various embroidery techniques such as "weaving, embroidering, picking, and pasting" to make "birds, animals, animals, Trees, fruits, flowers, grass" and other objects from life and nature are vividly expressed on their headgear, jackets, and accessories, it has created a simple and pure, dense and colorful pattern world.

Yi costumes have a strong color contrast and have the distinctive characteristics of oriental national costume art. Costumes made with red, yellow, blue, black, blue, purple and white colors have rich connotations: blue, the birthplace of a holy nation; Red, the war and history of blood and fire; Green, symbolizing mountains and forests; Black, recording the rivers crossed by ancestors during their migration; White is the bitterness of disaster and misfortune; Purple represents the intersection and integration of tribes. Yi traditional dress, writing the history of the survival and development of this nation.

The costumes of the Yi ethnic group in northern Qiu are the most distinctive of the costumes of the Izani branch and the Bo branch. The whole set of traditional clothing of the women of the Sanni includes a baotou, sloping gown, shawl, waist (or waist), wide crotch pants and embroidered shoes. The most distinctive headdress of the women of the Sari branch, the semi-circular shape of the headdress resembles a rainbow in the sky. The color and ornaments on the baotou are slightly different with age and marriage. The elderly and married women mostly use red and black cloth to make baotou, and only a triangle ornament is placed flat on the top of their heads, indicating that they are married. The unmarried girl's Baotou is very gorgeous. It is made of red, black, yellow, green and other colored silk. The edge of Baotou is nailed with white silver bubbles. The two ends of Baotou are embroidered with exquisite flowers and plants. The right end of Baotou is decorated with a string of glass beads or a lock of black hair. The ears of Baotou are each inserted with a finely embroidered "colored butterfly" to indicate unmarried.

Bo men wear linen or cotton shorts and a sleeveless linen jacket embroidered with patterns. Women's clothing is very unique, Bo people women wear pullover, shaped like a chicken crown, Bo people call it "sky hat", "chicken crown hat", the hat around the various colors of small colored beads and sea shells neatly arranged, and with silver, bone ornaments and so on. The most conspicuous is that the brim of the hat is covered with two to three rows of white beads arranged in order. A hat belt about 4cm wide and white toothed seashells are strung on the top of the hat, which is very characteristic.

1. Puzhehei Village

The largest natural village in Wenshan Prefecture has more than 900 households and more than 5000 people. The Yi nationality here is one of the earliest indigenous peoples in Qiubei. The name of Puzhehei scenic spot comes from the name of this village. Puzhehei is pronounced in Yi language and translated as a pond with many fish and shrimps.

2. Xianrendong Village

Xianrendong Village is a settlement of the Sani people of the Yi ethnic group, with more than 1100 people from 173 households. Their ancestors escaped from Shilin and came here about 400 years ago. Today, they still retain ancient national costumes, weddings, sex worship, Bimo sacrifices, "flower houses", "lover's houses" and other folk customs. You can see the ancient. The Sari dance and the Han Dynasty stone tiger, Jiama, wood carving, stone carving, embroidery, etc.

The man rowed the willow boat to the lake to set up a fish cage and cast a net, while the woman weaved and cooked at home. Rice transplanting, fishing, shrimp fishing, lotus picking, leisurely. This is the real life of the Thani! They work at sunrise and rest at sunset.

 

4. Song and Dance Festival

The green mountains and waters of Qiubei have nurtured generations of Yi people and nurtured their nature of singing and dancing. Yi music is full of characteristics, dance and singing; many festivals, singing step, enjoy joy, celebrate a happy new life.

1. String Dance

The Yi people in Qiubei County have black Yi, Bo people, Sani, Sera and other branches. Although the language customs and costumes of each branch are different, the Xianzi dance is a symbol of ethnic identity. In Qiubei, as long as there is a place where the Yi people live, there is a clank of Xianzi, and as long as there is a place where there is Xianzi, there is a warm and cheerful Yi Xianzi dance. There is a slang saying that "Yi people do not jump strings and live in vain for decades; The elder brother's string is ringing, the elder sister's foot is itchy, the little string is a piece of firewood, love is held in her heart, several pieces of clothes are worn out, life and death are inseparable from this piece of firewood.

2. Flower Face Festival

"Flower face Festival" is a traditional festival of the Yi people in Qiubei County, which has a history of more than 1000 years. It is held every year on the first Snake Day or Pig Day in June of the lunar calendar. It was named after the ancient ancestors smeared the face with pot smoke and exorcised demons and evils. After continuous development, the "Flower Face Festival" has evolved into a carnival for contemporary Yi youth to choose the right person by wiping the face. During the festival, Yi people kill chickens and sheep, welcome guests from afar, and hold entertainment activities such as wrestling, singing folk songs, and dancing string dances. Young men and women wipe each other's faces by the river at the head of the village. The darker the face is, the deeper the affection. In the inheritance of national history and culture, the local national characteristic culture of "respecting black, taking black as beauty, taking black as pleasure, and taking black as auspicious" has gradually formed. The activity of "thousands of people jumping strings and ten thousand people wiping faces" held in 2009 has successfully set a Guinness world record.

3. Torch Festival

The Torch Festival is a grand festival of the Yi people, usually held on the 24th of June in the lunar calendar. The Torch Festival is a sacrificial festival, and the content of the sacrifices is to worship the ancestors, the dragon god, the earth god, the crop god, and the thunder god. On the day of the festival, every family was busy killing chickens and sheep. The happiest time is at night, when young men and women from all over the village walk around the fields with burning torches. They shook the torches in their hands and kept calling and shouting, meaning to fight the devil and remove the demon. After that, young men and women from all walks of life gathered together, gathered torches, lit a fire, danced string dances around the fire, sang love songs, and reveled.

4. Sweets

It is the most important festival for the Yi Sani people besides the Torch Festival. Every year, the first rat day of the lunar winter month is sacrificed on the horse day. In the sacrificial ceremony, presided over by the village's Bimo (village elders or priests), the whole village's men kneel under the dragon tree to worship the god of dense branches, dense branches and the "stone dolls" taken out of the secret hanging rock cave ". The villages of Sani, in front of and behind the villages, are covered with thick woods, which are the holy land of the Sani people. Qiubei Sanni people are generally known as Longshan, sacred tree, ghost forest, but collectively referred to as "dense branches forest". The dense branches and forests are sacred and inviolable. Every plant, tree, and animal creatures here are sacred things. No one can damage them. If they violate the ban, they will be criticized and punished by the whole village.

 

Bo Branch of the Yi Nationality in the Northern Qiu of 5.

1. Qiubei Shedi Grassfield and Yi Bo Branch

Shed grassland is located in the northwest of Qiubei County, 56 kilometers away from the county seat, with an area of more than 100000 mu. It is the largest grassland in Yunnan Province. It is known as "cattle fat, Ma Zhuang and wool flying", and is known as the "little Shangri La" of Wenshan ". There is Yangxiong Mountain, the highest mountain in Qiubei County, with an altitude of more than 2500 meters. Looking east from Yangxiong Mountain, you can see the pastoral scenery of Puzhehei. To the west, you can see Maitreya and Huxi across the river. At the bottom of the mountain is Nanpan River. There is a unique clan-Bo people, who call themselves "Pan Po" and "Bo". When the ethnic groups were divided in 1956, they were classified into the Bai Yi branch of the Yi nationality. According to research, the Bo people in the northern part of the country entered the territory of the northern part of the country only after evading pursuit from Yibin, Sichuan, and are a nation on the verge of extinction in the world. There are currently more than 600O people in the county.

2. Residential

Bo people live in mountainous and semi-mountainous areas, with a cold climate (about 2000 meters to 2500 meters above sea level), which is a typical karst landform. There are more stones, less land, and more houses are built with stones. Bo people show their unique ethnic customs from the settlement of the village to the location of their houses, from the division of houses to the stacking of things, from the architectural structure to the beliefs and taboos of their houses. The Bo people are a farming and pastoral nation, and their residential villages are mostly located on high mountains or slopes with dangerous terrain, mostly sunny. The main house is built along the mountain, with lower ear rooms on both sides, plus a screen wall, which is a composite building of civil structure. Most of them are straw houses, and a few are tile houses. The main room is higher than the ear room, the primary and secondary are distinct, and the layout is coordinated. In front of the vertical eaves, the formation of the front of the corridor pattern, with a row of pillars-based roof load-bearing, four-column landing. The main houses of ordinary houses are generally one to three and consist of three parts: the main house and kitchen in the middle; There is a fire pond on the upper right of the entrance, supported by a triangular iron frame, which is the center of the family's residential life. The left side of the entrance is the livestock pen.

3, the diet

The staple food of Bo people is potato, corn, buckwheat, peas, etc. The blood of poultry and livestock is eaten raw by marinating and mixing with mature vinegar, adding garlic and ingredients to the mouth. Cooked food:(1) corn rice, grind corn and steam it in a steamer;(2) use buckwheat to make buckwheat baba or buckwheat pimples for rice;(3) Potatoes are mostly used for cooking (dipped in pickles with excellent taste), stir-fried and braised (used to eating with hands). Tea custom: the tea of the Bo people is a natural camellia, which is baked with carbon ash (commonly known as sister ash) until crispy and then washed with boiling water.Gourmet food: roasted whole sheep, bacon, medicated grass black, sand purple potato

4. Mysterious customs

The Bo people are an ancient and mysterious people who were once thought to have disappeared. The local people couldn't figure out where their ancestors were. Some said they were the remnants of the Xia Dynasty and the prisoners of war of the Shang Dynasty; some said they were the nomads in the north... At present, there are more than 6000 Bo people in Qiubei.

The hidden "ancestral coffin" hanging in the air ".

The burial style of Bo people in Qiu Bei is very special. Instead of burying the dead in coffins or ancestral graves, the "soul" and "ancestral" of the dead are taken for cave burial. This burial custom is usually when the deceased is about to die, the patriarch takes a thin piece of copper and quickly cuts a half-length profile about 4cm wide above the deceased's face, engraves the eyes, nose and mouth, which is called "taking the spirit". The cut piece of copper is commonly known as "the soul piece".

Purge the soul

The ritual of "cleansing the soul" of the Bo people in the Qiu Bei is also unique. Every year, the first snake day in October of the lunar calendar is the ancestor worship day. The whole family, men and women, old and young, get together to kill pigs and sheep. Under the leadership of the patriarch, they take the offerings to the place where the ancestor coffins are hidden. The patriarch took out the ancestral coffin from the cave, counted the number of "soul pieces" in the coffin in public, checked the number, cleaned the soul pieces, and then placed offerings for sacrifice. Finally, the patriarch alone holding the ancestral coffin chose another cave to place secretly.

chisel tooth custom

It is to prevent people from dying after being infected with miasma.

Doll Crossing the River

The local people from generation to generation, it is said that the ancestors are in order to avoid the war to escape from the "outside the river" across the river to Qiubei. In order to commemorate the history of the ancestors fleeing across the river, there has always been a local custom: when little babies are born, they must be put into the water to let them cross the "river".

 

6. sani branch romantic marriage customs

The public house is the place where Yi Sani boys and girls met, fell in love and dated. The Sani people in Qiubei call it lover's house, flower house and "small public house". The Sani people in Qiubei call the little girl's flower room and lover's room. Sani young men own the "small public house", at least two or three, as many as a dozen young men and women gathered together to know the opposite sex called the "big public house". In public houses, little girls usually use yueqin and mouth strings, while young men usually carry three strings and flute, which are the exclusive instruments used by young men and women in love in the old Sani. The young men and women of Sani who enter the stage of love take part in productive labor during the day and show their talents at night to attract the attention and affection of the opposite sex in order to find their favorite partner.

 

Unique religious beliefs of the Yi people in 7.

Primitive religion, animistic nature worship and ancestor worship. Nature worship is dominated by faith in elves and ghosts.

1. Yi people are a people who worship fire. They think that fire brings light, warmth, cooked food and gets rid of the attack of wild animals to human beings. The worship of the fire pond and the fire pond in the hall house of the yi nationality. In the festival to burn a bonfire, around the fire to play the harp to sing, singing and dancing. In cremation, the soul is returned to the birthplace of the ancestors, and the spirit cards set by the family for the deceased are placed on the front wall next to the fire pond.

2. The Yi people also have a religious belief in worshipping the black tiger and regard the black tiger as their totem and ancestor. The Yi people's concept of worshipping black tigers has also expanded to the custom of advocating black, believing that the souls of ancestors like black, so after building a new house, the house should be smoked with fireworks before moving in. The dress reflects the aesthetics of Black Zun and Yellow Beauty.

3, the concept of eight directions. Its basis is the gossip of the Yi people, which is related to the solar calendar of the Yi people. The eight directions refer to the east, west, south, north, southeast, northeast, southwest, northwest, that is, the square octagonal, which respectively represent the eight natural phenomena of heaven and earth, thunder, wind, water, fire and mountain.

 

8. Bimo

"Bimo" is the host of Yi religious activities and the disseminator of Yi culture. Bimo is hereditary and is passed on to men but not to women. They are generally familiar with Yi classics and are familiar with astronomical calendars, genealogy, ethics, epics, myths and legends, etc. and Yi literature. They are the communicators of Yi people between people and gods. Bimo is invited to recite scriptures for life and death, festivals, gatherings, diseases, etc. There are many Bimo scriptures, which are divided into hundreds of categories such as sacrificial scriptures, divination scriptures, exorcism scriptures, ghost sending scriptures, guiding scriptures, and evocation scriptures. In addition to the scriptures, Bimo also has magic tools such as divine fans, dharma caps, dharma bells, and signature drums. In addition to presiding over religious activities, Bimo also relied on his prestige to assist family leaders in the divine adjudication of disputes over property, theft, and quarrels.

 

9. Yi Ethics

In the long-term process of social development, the Yi people have formed a set of extensive and rigorous ethical norms. The history books of the Yi nationality, such as "Ni-jie-shen" and "Li-duo-su" (I. e. "Li-shu"), are a systematic summary of the ethics and morality of the Yi nationality and a concrete reflection of the aesthetic concepts of the Yi nationality.

The rigorous traditional ethics and morality make most of the Yi people humble and honest, honest and frank, and value credibility over cunning. In all aspects of social life, the Yi people have ethical rules to follow and courtesy to follow. If you meet an old man in the road, you have to give way, and when you see someone riding a horse, you have to dismount and give way. At the same table, please invite the elderly and elders to sit on the table, and first serve good wine and dishes. Guests at home should be enthusiastic and let them sit down, offer cigarettes and tea, etc.

The Yi people attach importance to blood ties and talk about family ties. They are from other places and have never met each other. Most of them can climb to their relatives. They will soon be as affectionate as friends meet after a long absence. The Yi proverb says: "Han people rely on money, while Yi people rely on their power." Therefore, the Yi people can go out without any money and travel freely in the Yi people's places, which shows the status of family affection in the eyes of the Yi people.

Handout spirit, heavy reputation, not greedy for ill-gotten gains; regard thieves as evil, help each other enthusiastically in everything, and solve problems; regard saying not as a "villain", not helping when you see difficulties, and not suppressing evil as injustice.

In the Yi family, the old is the first, the elders are the most important, and all etiquette orders are based on the elders and the elderly. Those who violate the rules and disrespect will arouse public anger, be accused, and even be admonished and punished. Therefore, many Yi people have a life philosophy that they would rather die than lose their integrity, starve to death and not steal. They regard "goodness" as the basic moral principle of communication between people. They do not do evil, greed or foul language. They advocate integrity, help the poor, meet each other honestly and get along with each other in good faith. Among the Yi people in Wenshan Prefecture, although there are no Yi books circulating, as a national ethical concept, it is still passed down from generation to generation of "Bimu" and the reputation of the elderly.