8/9/2005: Water-splashing festival

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Dateline: Jinghong, Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture in southwest China's Yunnan Province. The area is one-third Dai, which it seems is a Buddhist sect. This is their most important annual holiday. It's a water-splashing festival which is also called the festival for bathing the Buddha. And even though super soakers have apparently become commonplace, it's been going on a long time. From the full story,

Although there are numerous legends about the origin of the festival, one of the best known tells of the long-ago days when there was a devil in the village where the Dai people lived, doing all manner of evil. All the people hated him but his magic was too powerful for them to overcome.

One day in the sixth month, his seventh wife, who had been kidnapped from the village, tricked him into revealing his weaknesses. As he slept, his wives used his hair to cut off his head. But the head began to burn when it touched the ground, and the fire would die only if one of the women held the head tightly in her arms.

So the seven wives took turns holding the head, each for a period of one year. Every year when they changed, people would splash water on the woman who had been holding the head for the past year to wash away the blood and a year of fatigue.

As time went by, the ritual became a happy -- even raucous -- way to send off the old year and greet the new.

















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