Hold A Picnic At The Riverside – Chinese Miao’s Fishing Festival

The Miao Ethnic group in southwestern China boasts lots of interesting festivals and holidays all year round. Visit them in a holiday, you can see the local women’s beautiful silver jewelry and colorful costumes. Fishing Festival held in April is for people to go fishing and have fun.

The day before the festival, people go to climb mountains to collect special leaves and mash them. The mashed leaves are used to narcotize fishes in the river. Old people burn incense to worship their ancestors, while women busy themselves with grinding bean curd and preparing for yummy food for the next day.

On the morning of the festival, carrying their long, big harpoons on their shoulders, men go fishing. Women follow their men behind. Wearing beautiful costumes and silver jewelry, they carry a bamboo basket with food and wine. After arriving at the river, women wait at the riverside with food and wine beside them.

Standing on both sides of the river, men take their harpoons in hands. One man starts to murmur a prayer, then scatters a handful of mashed leaves into the river. Finally all men throw their mashed leaves into the river. Soon a big, long black dragon floats on the surface of the river, which is actually the appearance of numbers of fish that have been narcotized by the leaves.

Men pitch their big harpoons onto the dragon, and dozens of fishes are killed. With the dragon pursued in the water, people shout and laugh. The scene seems to be a battlefield.

In a few hours, every man has got lots of fish. They bring the fish to the women, who have got everything ready for cooking the fish. Cooked with water from the river, the fish tastes excellent with a natural fragrance.

People eat, drink, and exchange toasts. Some young people sing songs to express their love.

Fishing Festival originated from a ceremony of praying for rain. Legend has it that a god living in the heaven had a beautiful daughter. One day, the princess got very sick, and no medicine could make her feel better. In a dream, the god was told that a soup cooked with one hundred fishes from a river could save the princess. So he sent people to find fishes and cook them in a soup. After drinking the soup, the princess soon recovered. Feeling grateful to the fishes, the god declared the river from which the fishes came to be under his protection, forbid anybody to catch the fishes in that river. Think that this was still not enough, he also ordered all the rain to be directed to the river, and not to the soil around it.

However, without rain, plants died, and people couldn’t grow food on their farmland. So people slaughtered oxen, pigs to hold a sacrificial ceremony to pray for rain. But this didn’t work. With all the pigs and oxen slaughtered, people had to catch carps, crucian, chubs, salmon, and giant salamanders to be used as sacrifice.

The god saw his fishes to be killed and were sad to cry. He cried for three days, with thundering and lightning. His tears turned to be downpour, which irrigated the plants and grass.

Since then, the Miao always went to slaughter fishes when they needed rain. This later evolved into the Fishing Festival.

Today more and more people go to visit the Miao areas. They are all attracted by the beautiful landscape and the local women’s silver jewelry.