Lusheng Festival

Driving across to the east of Guizhou province we attended our first Lusheng Festival. The Lusheng is the musical instrument used by the Miao, made of bamboo and sounding a little bit like panpipes. The festival included three main components; buffalo fighting, dancing and the sideshow activities and food that make any gathering like this into a fun time for the whole family. I didn’t watch the buffalo, preferring to focus on the dancers.

The dancing is actually a competition between each village. The girls of the village dance in a circle, ordered by height and wearing their traditional costumes. Some of the girls were tiny little toddlers. In the middle of the circle are the lusheng players (usually two of them, from what I saw).