The strange customs of Guizhou's Longhorn Miao people use the hair of their deceased ancestors to make a bun

Deep in the mountains at the junction of Liuzhi, Zhijin and Nayong counties in northwest Guizhou Province, there is a branch of the Miao people living. This branch of the Miao people has a strange custom. Women in this branch of the Miao people use a wooden long horn and the hair of their deceased ancestors to bundle it with black hemp wool. The dress is extremely strange and is also called "Long-Horned Miao."

At this moment, the main settlement fields of Changjiao Miao are in some villages in Suoga, Xinhua and Zhijin County in Liuzhi Special Zone, with a total population of more than 4000 people. Dawan Xinzhai Village is a remote and poor long-horn Miao settlement in the northeast of Xinhua Township, Liuzhi Special Zone. The altitude is 1,100 - 1,940 meters. Each village is established in a hidden place in the mountains. The village seems to have remained closed in its natural condition and its original social and economic form even under a newly built road with uneven contours that has been built in successive years. When you enter a person, it seems that a peach is round outside the world.

The old man in the village recalled that the village has a history of more than 200 years, and the seniors lived in the mountains of Jiakong Village. One day, an eagle flew from the depths of the mountain and took away the chickens of the family surnamed Wang in the village. The Wang family's wages chased the eagle into the mountain. They found that the mountains were full of vegetation and the shade covered the sky, so they settled down. From then on, people continued to arrive, forming the village at this moment. Today, there are 228 households in the village with 792 people, full of long-horned Miao families.

Villagers have reclaimed dry land to grow grain (mainly corn, potatoes, and wheat). The yield is extremely low. Fundamentally, they are still in a natural economic state of "making it at sunrise and resting at sunset" and "men farming and women weaving". There are also few equipment produced. Cows have become the primary animal power in agricultural production, so they are greatly admired by the villagers, and horns have become revered objects and worn on the heads of women with long-horned seedlings.

In Changjiaomiao Village, the village master, village elder, and ghost teacher hold lofty positions. They are the soul of the village to grasp the power of managing the village. The village master is engaged in administrative management, the village veteran is engaged in moral management, and the ghost master is engaged in energy control. In the past, village chiefs and village elders were naturally formed through constant production and life. It has been more than a decade since the village chief was democratically elected.

The family of "Longjiao Miao" was basically built on the basis of blood relationship, kinship relationship, and marriage. It was implemented that only intermarriage was carried out within the ethnic group and no intermarriage was carried out within the family. Therefore, marriage became the connection between the 12 villages of Longjiao Miao. Related ties. At this moment, young men and women of this nation implement freedom of love, and still maintain the traditional situation of jumping on flower slopes and rushing to the market to establish relationships between love and marriage.

Every year during the Spring Festival, the jumping on the flower slopes from the first four to 14th of the first month of the summer calendar is a good opportunity for young people of Long-horned Miao to talk about love, and it is also the most cautious festival of the year. During this time, young men have to travel to villages to sing songs with young women. They held bamboo lusheng, quince, bamboo flutes, and perhaps picked a few wooden leaves, and came to the door of the girl they liked to sing to each other.

Long-horned Miao still has an equally complete career and continues to have a pedantic and strange Miao cultural tradition symbolized by the long-horned headwear. This is also the most distinctive symbol of the long-horned Miao. Its strangeness is that women wear a large wooden comb shaped like long horns on their heads. The two horns are higher than the sides of the head, and hair weighing 2-4 kilograms is wrapped around the horns. These huge buns are made with a long-angle wooden comb, the hair of deceased ancestors, and black hemp wool.

I heard that the bigger the bun, the more beautiful it is. In particular, women's headdresses are as big as buckets and shaped like pig kidneys. The heaviest ones are nearly 10 kilograms and the lighter ones are three to five kilograms. This huge bun only "appears" when dressed up. Usually, girls have big white wooden horns hanging on their heads. In the early years, both men and women wore "long horns". In recent years, due to attacks from foreign cultures, men basically did not wear the clothes of the native people, but only wore them during weddings and funerals.

The funeral is a very important part of the energy culture of the Long-horned Miao. This is a group that attaches great importance to decline and decline. Every decline ceremony is a spiritual exchange and similarity with that of their ancient ancestors. It is a review of the whole tribe's own history and traditional culture, such as the ceremony of "beating Jia", the ceremony of "circling Jia" through 12 stockades, the ceremony of building Jia houses and demolishing Jia houses to "open the way", etc. In the past few days, every city in the village where the funeral was held has opened its doors to entertain guests from other villages. The entire funeral ceremony has been unprecedentedly limited, like a grand and festive festival.

Travel Guide: 1) Longjia is just one of the twelve villages. Most of the other villages are not connected by roads, but they are all connected by mountain roads. The ones closer are Xiaobatian, Xili, and Xinzhai, which are two to three kilometers away. Please ask for leadership or ask for your preference. The appearance of the village is similar, but the farther it is from the road, the poorer it looks.