The Dai people generally believe in Hinayana Buddhism and many festivals are related to Buddhist activities. Songkran Festival is the biggest festival held by Dai people every June. At that time, monks, relatives and friends will hold a big banquet to splash water on each other. During the Songkran Festival, besides wine and vegetables, there are many Dai snacks. The more important festivals of the Dai people are the closing festival and the opening festival, both of which are Hinayana Buddhist festivals. Dai people in Xinping, Yuanjiang, Jinggu and Jinping celebrate the Spring Festival, Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival with the same content and activities as the local Han people.
Every Dai family in Xishuangbanna should help build a house. The completion of the new house is to congratulate the new house. First of all, the young man went upstairs, carrying a cow's head and singing a song of blessing. Mature men carry boxes, and married women carry bedding. The girls took the food in turn, then set up a tripod on the fireplace, set the table, bought wine and prepared dishes, and sang songs to congratulate the new house. The villagers also want to give some auspicious gifts to their owners.
Dai people also worship the village gods. Dai people call it "going to Raman", which means protecting the gods. They worship twice a year. Worship the harvest before planting seedlings and give thanks after the autumn harvest. Every family prepared tributes and sent them to the room dedicated to social gods. After reading the sacrificial words, everyone ate together. New members of the club should provide chicken, wine and bacon strips to the god of society. In Yuanjiang and Xinping, the Dai people generally worship dragon trees and dragons. When the Dai people in Yuanjiang sacrifice the dragon tree in the third month of the lunar calendar every year, the whole village will kill the red bull. Before slaughter, they will paint the red bull with white ash and spread red and green cloth on it. In the same month, in order to protect the safety of livestock, pigs will be sacrificed to Heaven and Earth.
marriage customs
Chasing yellow chickens is a way for young men and women in Xishuangbanna to seek love by eating rumors, that is, girls take yellow chickens to the market to sell. If the buyer is a girl's lover, the girl will take the initiative to take out the stool and let him sit next to it. Through conversation, if the two sides love each other, they will carry chickens and stools to pour out their feelings in the Woods; If the buyer is not the girl's lover, the girl will double the asking price.
"Drink a little wine", men and women are engaged, and the man goes to the woman's house to treat them. The guests dispersed, the man was accompanied by three male companions, and the woman and three female companions set the table for dinner. "Eat some wine" means eating three dishes: the first one is spicy; The second way is to put more salt; The third course should have sweets. It means passion, depth and sweetness. The completion of the new house is to congratulate the new house. The young man went upstairs first, carrying a bull's head and singing blessing song. Mature men carry boxes, married women carry bedding, and girls carry food in turn. Then they set up a tripod on the fireplace, set the wine table, prepared dishes and sang songs to congratulate the completion of the new house. The villagers also send some auspicious gifts to their owners.
On the wedding day, the wedding will be held in both parties' homes, mostly in the woman's home first. At the wedding reception, the table should be covered with green banana leaves, and the dishes include blood flourishing (white flourishing) symbolizing good luck, rice cakes and various dishes. Before the banquet, the bride and groom should make a tie ceremony, that is, the wedding uses a white line to bypass the shoulders of both sides, and two white lines are tied to the wrists of the bride and groom respectively, symbolizing purity. Then, the old man kneaded the glutinous rice into a triangle, dipped it in salt, and put it on the top of a tripod on the fireplace to let it fall off naturally after burning, symbolizing that love is as strong as iron.
Dress
Dai people are divided into "Han Dai", "Shui Dai" and "Huayao Dai", and their different decorations represent their branch clothing culture. In particular, Xinping's "Huayao Dai" clothing and Jinping's Qingdai clothing are of great cultural value.
Dai costumes are elegant and beautiful, which not only pay attention to practicality, but also have strong decorative meaning, which can reflect the national personality of loving life and advocating the beauty of neutrality. There is little difference in men's wear across the country. Generally, you often wear a collarless double-breasted or large-breasted small sleeve coat, long-sleeved trousers and white cloth, pink cloth or blue cloth.
Dai women's clothing varies from region to region. Dai women in Xishuangbanna wear all kinds of tight underwear, tight collarless short sleeves, colorful skirts, feet long and delicate silver belts; Some Dai women in Dehong also wear colorful big skirts and tops, while others (such as Luxi and Yingjiang) wear white or other light-colored big-breasted tops, trousers and an embroidered waist, and then change to double-breasted tops and skirts after marriage; The "Huayao Dai" in Xinping and Yuanjiang areas wore cardigans and black skirts, which were decorated with colorful strips of cloth and silver bubbles to form various patterns, which were dazzling. All kinds of Dai women's dresses can show the graceful figure of women.
Dai women like to wear long hair and tie it on their heads. Some of them are decorated with combs or flowers, some are wearing headscarves, some are wearing tall cylindrical hats, and some are wearing top hats, each with its own beauty and characteristics.
Dietary customs
Rice and glutinous rice are staple foods. Dehong Dai's staple food is japonica rice, and Xishuangbanna Dai's staple food is glutinous rice. Usually eaten immediately. People think that japonica rice and glutinous rice will lose their original color and fragrance only if they are eaten immediately, so they don't eat overnight meals or seldom eat them, and they are used to kneading rice with their hands. All dishes and snacks are mainly sour, such as sour bamboo shoots, sour pea powder, sour meat and wild sour fruit; I like to eat pickled cabbage. It is said that Dai people often eat sauerkraut because they often eat sticky rice food that is not easy to digest, and sour food helps digestion.
The daily meat is pigs, cows, chickens and ducks, and don't eat or eat less mutton. Dai people who live in the mainland like to eat dog meat, are good at roast chicken and roast chicken, and are very fond of aquatic products such as fish, shrimp, crab, snails and moss. Eating with moss is a unique flavor dish of Dai people. Cooking fish, mostly sour fish or roasted citronella fish, in addition to making fish chop naan (that is, mashing grilled fish into mud and mixing coriander, etc.). ), fish jelly, grilled fish, eel with white sauce, etc. When eating crabs, they are usually chopped into crab paste with shell and meat for cooking. Dai people call this crab sauce "crab rice cloth".
Bitter gourd is a daily vegetable with the highest yield and consumption. In addition to bitter gourd, Xishuangbanna also has a kind of bitter bamboo shoots, so there is also a bitter taste in Dai flavor. The representative bitter vegetable is a mixture of cowhide and cold dishes cooked with ingredients such as ox gall.
There are many kinds of insects in the hot and humid areas of Dai nationality. Flavor dishes and snacks made by insects are an important part of Dai food. Common insects that eat are cicadas, bamboo worms, Okumo, soft-shelled turtle, ant eggs and so on. Dai people are addicted to alcohol, but their alcohol content is not high. They brewed it themselves, and it tastes very sweet. Tea is a local specialty, but Dai people only drink big leaf tea without spices. When drinking, only stir-fry on the fire until it is burnt, and drink it slightly after brewing. Chewing betel nut, mixed with tobacco and lime, all day long. Typical foods include dog meat soup pot, dried meat, salted eggs, dried eel and so on.
Holidays and festivals
The main festivals of the Dai people are the Dai calendar New Year-Water-splashing Festival, Closing Festival and Opening Festival. The "Water-splashing Festival" is a traditional festival for the Dai people to bid farewell to the old year and welcome the new year. The time is in the middle of April in the Gregorian calendar. The main activities during the festival are ancestor worship, sand piling, water splashing, packet loss, dragon boat race, lighting fire and singing and dancing carnival. The Dai people generally believe in Hinayana Buddhism and many festivals are related to Buddhist activities. Songkran Festival is the biggest festival held by Dai people every June. At that time, Buddhists will be worshipped, and monks, relatives and friends will be entertained to splash water on each other. During the Songkran Festival, besides wine and vegetables, there are many Dai snacks. The more important festivals are the closing festival and the opening festival, both of which are Hinayana Buddhist festivals.
Dai astronomical calendar
The arithmetic commonly used by Dai people in Xishuangbanna is called "visa calculation", which is influenced by Han nationality and other nationalities. The multiplication formula in Dai arithmetic books is translated from the formulas of Han nationality and other nationalities. Use it in your mother tongue. Dai arithmetic has no symbols of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division; The calculation method is from left to right, while calculating, erasing the calculated numbers, and finally getting the numbers on the left. People who are good at calculating and understand calendars can accurately calculate leap years, leap months and solar eclipses by this method. ?
Dai people call the calendar "Zulasaha" or "Sahaha", and there are many books that record and study calendars. There are two kinds of common almanac: one is to calculate the time of festivals, list many tables, and arrange the main contents of many almanac on them; The other is a calendar. The difference between Dai calendar and Gregorian calendar is 638 years, that is, Gregorian calendar is 639 years as the first year of Dai calendar. The Dai calendar begins in June and ends in June of the following year. Because of leap year and leap month, this festival is not fixed in June, and sometimes it may be extended to July. The Dai people's Lunar New Year will last for three or four days. The first day is New Year's Eve, the last day of the coming year. The third or fourth day is the first day of the new year, and the remaining one or two days are neither the old year nor the new year. There are leap years and leap months in Dai calendar. There are 12 months in a year on average, and odd months are big months, with 30 days per month. Bimonthly is a small month with 29 days in each month and 354 days in a year. Leap year every three to six years, fixed in August, this year is thirty days. A leap month is a leap every two or three years, a leap in nineteen years, a fixed leap in September, and thirty days. This year is also called double September. The Dai calendar is called Deng Jing in January and light poles in February. The Dai calendar calculates the months according to the period of the moon. Therefore, the daily order of each month is basically the same as that of the Han Chinese calendar. The Dai calendar also calls every day in the first half of each month the first day and the second day of each month. Call every day in the second half of the month, the next day, the second day of the next month. On the 15th, the moon is full, which is called Dengda, and on the first day of the first month, it is called Dengda. Dai people have four weeks in January and seven or eight days in a week. Like the lunar calendar, the Dai calendar marks the year, month and day with dry branches; However, the objects represented by the Twelve Branches of the Dai nationality are not exactly the same as those of the Han nationality. For example, "Zi" represents an elephant instead of a mouse, and "Chen" represents a jiaozi or a serpent instead of a dragon. ?
According to the local temperature characteristics, the Dai people divide the year into three seasons, with 1 April as the cold season, May to August as the hot season, and September to1February as the rainy season. In fact, a year is clearly divided into dry season and rainy season. Dehong, Gengma, Xinping, Yuanjiang and other places mainly use the lunar calendar of the Han nationality.