An introduction to the customs and habits of the Miao people in English

The Miao people in southeast Guizhou, Xiangxi, Hainan Island and Guangxi Rongshui eat rice, but also corn, sweet potatoes, millet and other miscellaneous grains; The Miao people in northwest Guizhou, southern Sichuan, and northeast Yunnan eat staple foods such as corn, potatoes, buckwheat, and oats. The Miao people in the southeast of Guizhou seal the glutinous rice and vegetables together in the jar, and then eat the fermented vegetables after one or two months, which is a kind of sour pickled vegetables with special flavor. The habit of drinking alcohol is very common, and it is used to entertain guests at weddings, funerals, festivals, or visits from relatives and friends.

The architecture of the Miao people also varies greatly from place to place. Residents of southeast Guizhou live in wooden bungalows and buildings. Buildings are generally two-storey, and the building form is mostly "stilted building" (that is, erecting piles according to the slope of the hillside and building on the piles), and the roof is a double slope.

The upper floor of the roof stores grain and sundries, and the sundries are stacked under the stilted floor or livestock in captivity. Xiangxi and Guizhou Songtao and other places, the use of wooden structure, double slope tile roof or grass roof bungalow, each 3 5 rooms, "partial building" as a stove house or livestock pen. In the past, landlords or wealthy families also built courtyards and built high walls or stone blockhouses to protect them.

The walls of Miao houses in the Wenshan area of Yunnan Province are mostly made of woven bamboo strips and pasted with mud on the outside, and the roofs are flat grass roofs. Miao residents in the Zhaotong area mostly live in "quanquan houses", that is, houses that use several tree trunks to cross paste, cover with thatch, and use branches or bamboo to weave and paste mud as walls. Generally, it is divided into two rooms, one for humans and animals.

The Miao people of Hainan Island live in a long and narrow thatched house, with three rooms in one, with long eaves, and the corridor under the eaves is a place to rest. The Miao people in southern Sichuan and northwest Guizhou mostly live in houses with grass roofs or tiled roofs. The Miao are generally small monogamous families, and property is inherited by men, and housewives enjoy more power and status in the family.

Elderly parents are generally supported by their young sons. In some areas, there is a habit of fathers and sons joining names, the son's name comes first, the father's name comes last, and usually only the real name is called, not the father's name. Due to the influence of the patriarchal feudalism of the Han nationality, some formulated characters, established ancestral halls, and repaired genealogies.

Young men and women of the Miao nationality are relatively free to marry, and young men and women freely sing to each other and fall in love and get married through social activities such as "Youfang" (southeast of Qianxi), "sitting in the village" (Rongshui, Guangxi), "stepping on the moon" (Wenshan, Chuxiong, Yunnan), "jumping flowers" (Qianzhong, Qianxi), and "meeting girls" (Xiangxi). Chuxiong and other places in Yunnan have a "girl's room" system in order to choose a good mate. There are also parents who arrange marriages, generally through relatives and friends, and talk about the right family.

Miao women have the custom of "not leaving their husbands behind" after marriage, especially in the southeast of Guizhou, which is still preserved. In some areas, the Miao people also have customs such as "returning the girl", "changing the house", and "marrying wives and sisters".

The Miao people have a population of about 7.4 million, distributed in Guizhou, Hunan, Yunnan, Hubei, Hainan, Guangxi and other places. The climate of the Miao inhabited area is mild, surrounded by mountains and rivers, and large and small field dams are dotted among the mountains, giving people a peaceful atmosphere.

The diet is also very interesting. Rice is the staple food for three meals a day, and fried food is fried poop, which is breaded with fresh meat or sauerkraut, which is extremely delicious. Miao people also love to eat sour and spicy food, and their typical foods are:

Blood soup, chili bones, Miao Xiang turtle and phoenix soup, Miancai ba, insect tea, Wanhua tea, pounded fish, sour soup fish, etc.

1. Miao folk oral literature.

The folk oral literature of the Miao people is very well developed, and there are several of them.

The volume is vast, the content is rich, the forms are diverse, and the art is exquisite, including ancient songs, legends, folk tales, ballads, narrative poems, proverbs and aphorisms, etc.

2. Miao nationality**.

Miao **, colorful. There are folk song tunes, reed sheng tunes, zona tunes and qin tunes, the most common of which are folk song tunes and reed sheng tunes, and the reed sheng tune is the most representative tune of the Miao people.

3. Miao folk crafts.

The folk crafts of the Miao people, such as flower picking, embroidery, brocade, batik and silver ornaments, are magnificent and colorful. After drawing the pattern pattern on the white cloth with a wax knife dipped in wax, it is immersed in the dyeing vat for dyeing, and then boiled with water, and the yellow wax is removed to reveal the batik process of the white pattern on the blue background, which has a history of about 1,000 years and is widely spread among the Miao people.

I'm Miao de

Are you Hmong?

1. Eat: 1 Eat oil tea. Oil tea is a fried popcorn rice, mixed with water to boil into a hospitality tea, the guest drinks, the host is happy, do not drink, it is regarded as looking down on the host.

Some also have to drink 3 cups, the first cup is oil tea, the second cup is bitter tea, and the third cup is sweet tea. 2 Eat mountain loaches (lizards, collectively referred to as four-legged snakes). Add a small amount of rice flour to the processed mountain loach and marinate it into the jar to entertain distinguished guests.

3 Eat greens. I like to eat green vegetables during the Lunar New Year, and I generally don't chop them.

2. Wear: The costumes of the Miao people vary from region to region. Male, the average elderly wears collarless diagonal button-down cardigans, belts, trouser hems, and leggings.

Middle-aged people and young people wear cardigans, short and small, and the fabrics are mostly self-produced "home machine spots", and women's clothing has another style, wearing collarless trimmed embroidered clothes on the upper body, decorated with petals in between, and trimmed, embroidered or multi-gauze wide trousers on the lower body. The eye-catching female headscarf, generally more than one zhang long, are blue and blue, and are lined with black lattice.

3. Living: 1 stilted building, stilted generally 2 3 houses, cornices and corners, and there are corridors surrounded by white wooden railings, and the railings are carved with various patterns. The upper floor of the hanging foot is used to store grain, farm tools, stack firewood, grass, soil ash, or enclose cattle, sheep, pigs and toilets.

The upper floor is inhabited. 2 stove, the shape is square, 60 70 cm high, the top is covered with wooden boards, surrounded by bricks and stones, surrounded by a square fire pit, used for cooking fire, and the lower layer around it is a space for chickens and ducks. When it's cold, the host and guests sit on the fire, laughing, talking about family affairs, and resting.

There is a wooden frame of different shapes hanging from the stove, on which seeds, tea baskets, straw sandals, etc. are hung.

The main beliefs are primitive worship such as nature worship, totem worship, ancestor worship, etc. In the old days, they believed in ghosts and gods, and according to legend, they knew witchcraft.

The Miao people are an ancient and colorful people, calling themselves "Mu", "Meng", "Damu" and "Daji". He said that there are several situations, one is to call "red seedlings", "flower seedlings", "white seedlings", "black seedlings" and so on according to the color of clothing; Second, it is called "highland seedlings", "Bazhai seedlings", "planting ginger seedlings" and so on based on the crops that are planted or planted; The third is the insults given to them by the rulers of the old era, such as "raw seedlings", "mature seedlings", "linen seedlings", etc. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, they were collectively referred to as "Miao people".

Guangxi's Miao nationality accounts for 1% of the country's Miao population, ranking fourth after the Han, Zhuang and Yao ethnic groups among the ethnic groups in Guangxi. The Miao people in Guangxi mainly live in the northern, northwest and western mountainous areas of Guangxi, which border Hunan, Guizhou and Yunnan. The biggest characteristic of the Miao nationality is that it is rich in all kinds of timber and native products, and maintains a splendid and simple national traditional culture.

The Miao people have their own traditional festivals, such as the Miao Year, the Drum Festival, the Lusheng Festival, etc., but the most solemn and the most content.

Abundant is the seedling year.

The time of the seedling year is not the same in different places. The Miao year in the areas of Rongshui, Sanjiang and Longsheng is generally on the day of the 11th month of the lunar calendar. The Miao Year is grand and warm, in addition to worshipping ancestors, drinking and feasting, various activities are also held.

The New Year is coming, and the whole family is keeping the New Year. After eating the "cross-the-ground meal" (this is a reunion meal between the Miao family and their ancestors in the underworld), people carry out various activities during the New Year. Sacrifice to the dragon pool, sacrifice to the god of the field, blow the sheng and dance, it is very lively, it is the most solemn scene of the Miao year.

Praying for a good harvest is a major theme of the Miao Year activities.