Folk festival held to mark the start of rice transplanting in Honghe Hani Terraces
The news was updated on April 26, 2019.
Recently the Honghe County in southeast Yunnan’s Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture celebrated the traditional Kaiyangmen Festival in the Samaba Terraces, an event to welcome the season of transplanting rice.
As an important part of the UNESCO’s World Cultural Heritage, the Samaba Terraces are the largest of its kind in the world with a total area of more than 16,000 mu (1067 hectares).
The annually held Kaiyangmen is important to local Hani people, as it is an occasion to pray for good harvest. Early on the festive day, Hani People gathered at the terraced fields. They held rituals, sang and danced, to express their good wishes for the coming year. After the celebrations, a long-table banquet with local specialties was served, attracting 600 tourists.
“We are interested in the Kaiyangmen, so we are here,” said Mr. Zhang from Chongqing. He was fascinated by the spectacular scenery and farming ceremony.
“Celebrating Kaiyangmen Festival is a good way to preserve Hani culture, and is of great significance to the protection, utilization and development of terraces,” said He Tao, mayor of Honghe County. Since 2015, the county has held large-scale folk custom exhibition activities during Kaiyangmen festival, a bid to explore, inherit and promote folk music and other folk culture.
