DgcityThe valley town of Gulong in Huangping County filled with sound and silver this week as Miao communities gathered for their traditional ninth-month lusheng festival. Crowds in full festival dress circled the dancing ground, reed pipes droning in layered harmonies and headdresses flashing as rows of dancers stamped the earth in unison.
The lusheng, a multi-pipe instrument with a shared wind chamber, is the centre of one of the Miao calendar’s most important gatherings, held on the 27th day of the ninth lunar month. Young men blow the instruments in formation while women and girls step through slow circling dances, their skirts swinging and their silver jewellery catching the light with every turn.
This year’s images show the full vocabulary of the occasion: elders in dark indigo watching from the edges, children in miniature versions of adult costume, and long processions winding between villages before the dancing begins. Horns and neckpieces, some pieces passed through families for generations, give even a still photograph a sense of weight and shine.
Huangping, in the mountains of Qiandongnan in Guizhou, is one of the strongholds of Miao culture, and the gathering is as much reunion as performance. Families who have moved to cities for work return for the day, and village kitchens host relatives from neighbouring settlements.
In recent years the festival has drawn photographers from across China, and local schools have put more hours into teaching the dances and reed-pipe repertoire. The result is a scene that remains unmistakably communal rather than staged for visitors: the dancing goes on for hours whether or not a camera is pointed at it.
By late afternoon, dust hangs over the ground and the pipes keep going. The festival will end with evening feasts in the villages, and the lusheng will be put away until the calendar comes around again. Between dances, families spread picnic cloths on the slopes with sticky rice, cured meat and jars of homemade wine, while young men competed to hold long notes on the largest lusheng pipes. In recent years several village schools have made the instrument part of the curriculum, worried that fewer boys were learning the circular-breathing technique that keeps the music going for hours without a break.
