The customs and habits of the Shui people: 1. The belief culture of the Shui people belongs to the category of primitive religious beliefs.

The Shui people believe that all things are animistic and worship many gods.

Nature worship, ancestral spirit worship, and god worship constitute the core of Shui tribe's beliefs.

2. The Shui people take rice as their staple food, and they like to eat hot and sour seasonings. They have the custom of "no vegetables are sour, no spicy food".

3. The Shui people like to wear light and elegant blue, white, and cyan, three cool-toned colors in their clothing.

The unique clothing aesthetics of the Shui people are simple, generous and practical.

Shui women's clothing is mostly made of Shui family cloth. They are collarless half-length gowns or long gowns with a large placket. The gowns are knee-length and generally do not have embroidered edges.

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The men of the Shui tribe wear collarless blue shirts and melon-pipe caps, while the elderly wear long gowns, with linings on their heads and leggings on their feet.

4. The Shui tribe likes to live together in clans with blood relatives. Most of the people in a village are related by relatives.

When building a house, one usually has to choose the auspiciousness based on the owner's birth date.

Most of the traditional house structures of the Shui people belong to the "ganlan" style of building where people live on the floor and go up the stairs.

After leveling the foundation, a stable load-bearing platform was built with thick column heads about 2 meters high, and then a thick floor slab was put on, and then a high-rise wooden rafthouse frame was erected on it.

The bottom floor is mostly used for feeding livestock, installing stone mills, stone mills and stacking debris.

Wooden stilt houses are not only moisture-proof, insect-proof, snake-proof, and theft-proof, but also save land, so they are very popular among people.

5. The Shui people have their own language and traditional writing.

The ancient writings of the Shui people, as well as the mixed classics of belief culture and folk knowledge written in this ancient writing, are called "Shui Shu".

6. In hospitality etiquette, the Shui people place emphasis on wine and cigarettes but not on tea.

When guests come, try your best to entertain them. Ordinary guests will be served meat dishes, important relatives and friends will be served by killing chickens and ducks, and distinguished guests will be served by killing piglets.

After sitting at the table, dip a drop of wine into the table with chopsticks to show respect to ancestors and gods before enjoying.

Treating guests with chicken or duck heads is an important etiquette for the aquarium people.

7. The folk dance arts of the Shui people include bronze drum dance, horn drum dance, Lusheng dance, horn dance, etc. They dance during festivals to add to the fun.

1) The aquarium horn dance consists of two actors wearing bull head props. People play reeds and dance music, and the female backup dancers form a circular dance hall. The horn performers make various fighting postures, vividly replicating the bullfighting performances in life.

2) In the Shui nationality Lusheng dance, the man leads the dance by playing the Lusheng, and the woman follows behind and changes the same movements according to the changes of the Lusheng tune and follows the lead dancer's dance posture according to the rhythm.

3) The Aqua Horn Drum is named after a pair of large leather drums with buffalo horns implanted at both ends as the main props.

During the dance, under the guidance of horn drums and bronze drums, boys play the Lusheng and the girls follow behind and dance.

In the meantime, bullfighting, harvesting, and love dances between men and women are also inserted.

8. There are more than 20 annual festivals for the Shui people. Among them, the Duanjie Festival is the most solemn festival for the Shui people. It is the beginning of the new year, saying goodbye to the old and welcoming the new, celebrating the harvest, worshiping ancestors, and gathering relatives and friends.

It is also the New Year Festival with the longest duration and the largest number of batches in the world.

The Duanjie Festival is celebrated at the end of the year in December and the first month of the new year in the water calendar. It corresponds to the eighth or ninth month of the lunar calendar, when the sweet-scented osmanthus is fragrant and the rice is ripe.

When worshiping ancestors during the Dragon Boat Festival, meat should be avoided and fish should be the most precious sacrifice. Fish wrapped with leeks is a traditional dish.

In addition to abundant food, ancestor worshipers also put out production tools such as hoes and sickles to inspire descendants to carry on the past and create a better future through labor.

Villages and villages beat bronze drums and skin drums, play the sheng and sing, all night long and throughout the month. Relatives, friends and surrounding ethnic groups come to visit and congratulate, and the Shuizu Mountain Village is immersed in a joyful atmosphere.

Duanjie horse racing is a legacy of the Shui people’s battles in their birthplace. It has gradually evolved into a major mass entertainment activity and is also a unique custom of the southern people.

It was held on the agreed "end slope", with all the riders whipping their whips and hooves racing, and there was great joy.

There are also cultural and artistic performances on "Duanpo" and various commodities are sold, making it a grand gathering place for people's emotional and material exchanges.