Migrant workers often eat in the wild. They can eat banana leaves or rice, as well as salt, pepper, sour meat, roast chicken, Mi Nan (which means sauce in Dai language) and pine. 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 made by drying vegetables, then boiling them in water, adding papaya juice to make the taste sour, then drying them and storing them. Put a little stir-fry or put it in soup when eating. This kind of sauerkraut is eaten almost every day by Dai people in some places. It is said that the reason why Dai people often eat pickled cabbage is that they often eat sticky rice food which is difficult to digest, while sour food helps digestion.
Eating with moss is a unique flavor dish of Dai people. The moss eaten by the Dai people is the moss on the rocks in the river in spring, preferably dark green. Tear it into thin slices after fishing, dry it and put it on with bamboo sticks for later use. When cooking, the thick ones are fried and the thin ones are roasted with fire. After crispy, crush them and put them in a bowl, then pour in boiling oil, add salt and stir, and dip the glutinous rice balls or bacon in it. It's delicious.
Cooking fish are mostly made of sour fish or roasted citronella fish, in addition to making fish chop naan (that is, grilled fish and mashed with coriander and other seasonings), fish jelly, grilled fish, eel in white sauce and so on.
When eating crabs, they are usually chopped into crab paste with shell and meat to make rice. 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, there is also a bitter bamboo shoot in Xishuangbanna, so there is also a bitter taste in Dai flavor. The representative bitter dish is a mixture of beef skin and cold dishes cooked with ingredients such as ox gall. Dai people generally believe in Buddhism spread from the south to the upper seat, and many festivals are related to Buddhist activities. During the Water-splashing Festival, besides wine and vegetables, there are many snacks with Dai flavor.
There is also a crispy rice made of fried glutinous rice paste. The more important festivals are Xia Festival (September in Dai calendar 15) and Xia Festival (February in Dai calendar 15), both of which are Buddhist festivals spread to China. Dai people in Xinping, Yuanjiang, Jinggu and Jinping celebrate the Spring Festival, Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival. Its content and activities are generally the same as those of the local Han nationality. Typical foods include dog soup pot, dried pork, salted eggs and dried eels. In Dai society, every family has to help build a house. It is necessary to congratulate the new house when it is completed. The young man went upstairs first, carrying a cow's head and singing a song of blessing. Mature men carry boxes and married women carry bedding. The girls take turns to get food. Then they set up a tripod on the fireplace, put it on the table, buy wine and prepare dishes, and sing songs to congratulate the new house. The villagers will also send some auspicious gifts to their owners.
"Catch the yellow chicken" is a way for young men and women in Xishuangbanna to seek love by eating rumors, that is, girls take the yellow chicken to the market for sale. If the buyer is a girl's lover, the girl will take the initiative to take out a stool and let him sit next to her. Through conversation, if the two sides love each other, they will hold the chicken and carry the stool to pour out their feelings in the Woods; If the buyer is not the girl's lover, the girl will double the asking price; Another example is "have a drink". When a man is engaged to a woman, the man goes to the woman's house to treat him. When the guests dispersed, the man was accompanied by three male companions, and the woman and her three female companions set the table for dinner together. "Eat a little wine" means eating three dishes: the first one is spicy; The second method is to add more salt; The third course should have sweets. It means passion, depth and sweetness.
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 do a binding ceremony, that is, the wedding uses a white line around their shoulders, and two white lines are tied to the wrists of the bride and groom respectively, symbolizing purity. Then, the old people knead the glutinous rice into a triangle, dip 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. The bride in Daping Township of Yuanjiang should sit on the bench with the groom after entering the door, eat four eggs mixed with glutinous rice and drink two glasses of wine; The Dai bride by the Yuanjiang River passed by the door, and the man gave everyone 4 pieces of meat, 4 ribs, 4 meatballs and 4 pieces of crispy meat before dinner. Dai people also worship the social gods in their village. Dai people call it "de-Raman" or "Piman", which is a kind of protector. They worship twice a year. Before sowing, they prayed for a bumper harvest, and after the autumn harvest, they expressed their gratitude. They collectively killed a cow or a pig. Every family prepares tributes and sends them to the rooms where they worship social gods. After reading the sacrificial words, everyone ate together. New members of the club should provide chicken, wine and bacon sticks to the social god.
In Menghai and other places, the custom of killing cattle and eating fish and cowhide still exists. The western version of a tribal god, some sacrifices must be black cows and white pigs. The Dai people in Yuanjiang and New Equality 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 has to slaughter the red bull, and before slaughter, it should be painted with red and green cloth with white ash. In the same month, in order to protect the safety of livestock, pigs will be sacrificed to heaven and earth.
Among the Dai people, especially in some remote areas, there are still some taboos in cooking, such as: burning firewood from the roots first; Don't cross the fire pit; You can't just move the tripod on the fireplace and so on. There are many kinds of insects in the hot and humid areas of Dai nationality. It is an important part of Dai food to make various flavor dishes and snacks with insects as raw materials. Insects that are often eaten are cicadas, bamboo worms, Okubo, terrapin, ant eggs and so on.
Catching cicadas is in summer. Every evening, when the cicada community is in the grass, the cicada's wings are soaked with dew and cannot fly. The women quickly picked cicadas into bamboo baskets and baked them in a pot to make sauce. Cicada sauce has the medical functions of clearing away heat and toxic materials, relieving pain and reducing swelling.
Dai people generally like to eat ant eggs. They often eat a yellow ant that nests in trees. When taking ant eggs, drive the ants away first, and then take the eggs. Ants' eggs vary in size, some as big as mung beans and some as small as rice grains. They are white and bright, washed, dried and fried with eggs. They are delicious. They can be eaten raw or cooked. When eaten raw, they are made into sauces, and when cooked, they are fried with eggs. Commonly used sour fruit and bitter gourd. In the valley dam area where people live by water, due to the influence of heat, humidity, rain and lush bamboo and wood, Dai people's residential buildings are mainly "dry hedges" (commonly known as bamboo houses). The upper and lower floors are made of wood and bamboo; The floors, walls and roofs are covered with thatch and tiles. People live in the upper floors, raise livestock and pile up crops below. The whole building has a large space, with bamboo or wood as walls and floors, which helps to keep the room dry and cool.
Nowadays, with the strengthening of ecological protection and economic development, some places have begun to replace bamboo and wood structures with concrete brick structures, but they still retain the form of "dry fences" or the shape of herringbone roofs, so they are still used to calling them "bamboo buildings". In the wide courtyard around bamboo buildings, we should plant fruits and trees or dig small fish ponds, which can not only provide shade, but also serve as an unguarded natural green "fence". The bamboo fence placed at random on the periphery is not to prevent people, but to prevent livestock from breaking in.
The development of Dai literature can be roughly divided into four stages: first, the emergence and development of ancient ballads, myths and creation epics; The second period is the formation and prosperity of heroic epics, legends and ballads; Third, the rise and prosperity of stories and narrative poems; Fourth, new literature is developing vigorously.
The famous "Dai Ancient Songs" contains 30 Dai ancient songs, which reflects the production activities and living conditions of Dai ancestors in primitive times. There are myths about the origin of heaven and earth, such as "Should Open Heaven in Eight Days", "Ancient Lotus" and "Gapa in Mei Fei". Myths about human origin include "gourd man", "gourd lays eggs", "human fruit" and "dirty mud fighter", flood myth includes "gourd seed" and totem myth includes "bird girl". Epics include Patamaga Champolo, Changed Zagompa, Crossing the Wooden Boat and The Origin of Everything in the World. The heroic epic is Li Feng. Ballads are mainly love songs, folk songs, labor songs and nursery rhymes.
Dai people love poetry very much, especially long narrative poems. The introduction of Buddhism and the creation of Dai language laid the foundation for the prosperity of narrative poetry. While accepting, translating and spreading foreign Buddhist literature, Dai folk artists absorbed Dai folk stories and created a large number of long folk narrative poems. According to research, there are as many as 550 narrative poems of Ayi (that is, the story of Buddha's reincarnation with the origin of Buddha as the core content).
Generally speaking, the common narrative poems of Dai people include Golden Frog, Pocket, Big Leaves, Golden Antelope, Sweet Valley, Sour Fish, Eyes of Twelve Princes, etc. Dai drama is a unique art of Dai people, which spreads in Gengma County, Lincang County, Menglian County, Pu 'er City and other places in Dehong Autonomous Prefecture of Yunnan Province.
Dai drama originated from the dance performances and Buddhist scriptures of Dai Song and specific figures, and absorbed the artistic nutrition of Yunnan opera and shadow play. At the same time, Dai drama spread from Tusi yamen to the people, and a large number of folk Dai drama performance organizations emerged. After the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC), the Dai drama has made new development. 1960 was the first professional performance group, Luxi Dai Troupe was established, and 1962 was expanded to Dehong Dai Troupe.
1962, "Hubei and luo sang" participated in the drama performance of southwest ethnic minorities, which was a sensation and was known as the "Pearl of Southeast Asia". Except for professional groups like the Dai Opera Troupe in Dehong Prefecture, almost all the larger Dai villages have amateur performance teams. Dai opera is basically only loved by the elderly, and young people are not interested because they don't understand it. The difficulties in the inheritance of Dai drama are increasingly prominent.