"It's another July that ignites your eyes, another July that ignites your soul. Riding on your horse and putting on beautiful clothes, the young man and girl walk into the Torch Festival of Love together. It's another July that ignites your youth, another July that ignites your dreams, dance your dance and play ancient music, and the Yi family walks into the Torch Festival of Love together. Yi, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Friends from afar, please come and take a break, taste the Yi family wine together, don't push back the auspiciousness and happiness you have given you, the flowers of friendship you planted will never wither!"

This song "July Torch Festival" was created and sung by the famous Yi group, Shanying Group. It was once popular all over the country. On the 24th day of the sixth lunar month, you will hear this song no matter where the Yi village goes. On this day, all the Yi settlements in the country will become a sea of ​​joy. Everyone sang and danced, and regardless of the nation, they celebrated the carnival on this day.

Li Wei got up early and was sleepy and saw that grandma had already warmed up food by the fire pit. There were two brand new vests on the sheepskin gown beside the fire pit, with exquisite patterns embroidered with red, yellow, and black threads. They were sewn by grandma stitches one by one. During the festival, grandma would put new clothes on the children to welcome this extremely important festival.

When grandma was young, she was a good hand at embroidery. The patterns and buttons on her clothes, the beautiful patterns on her waist, and even the straps of several young people when she was young (the utensils for carrying children from the cloth to the straps in Liangshanzhou are embroidered with exquisite patterns to protect the children from growing up healthily.) They were all sewn by her hands. Grandma is older and her eyes are not as good as before. However, in order to stay away from her grandson, grandma picked up the increasingly unfamiliar craftsmanship and gently stroked the exquisite patterns on her clothes. Li Wei could not imagine how the old and dizzy grandma embroidered it slowly with needles, and she didn't know what grandma's rough hand, which was sharpened by the years, was pricked by the needle. Li Wei was only moved.

"Grandma, you should not do these needlework in the future. Doing this will hurt your hands." Li Liang's voice trembled, but grandma smiled. "Oh, time is no longer forgiving. You are growing up day by day, and grandma is getting older day by day. I don't know when......" Li Wei covered his grandma's mouth and kissed his grandma's face hard: "Grandma, don't think too much, you will definitely live a hundred years old." Grandma caressed Li Wei's face kindly, "Li Wei's treasure, will you become a monster when you live a hundred years old?" Li Wei shook his head desperately: "Grandma, you still have to wait for Li Wei to hold a great-grandson for you..." Grandma smiled, "Okay, grandma doesn't want these things anymore. I'll wait for my good-grandson to carry a great-grandson for grandma."

A word made everyone laugh.

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When the Matoushan Reservoir collapsed in 1992, a huge torrent flow down the river destroyed all the things that were blocking. The stream between Matoushan and Yinpanshan was scraped into a shocking gap. Looking down from the mountain, it looked like a huge scar. However, when the flood peak was in the {Dawa} (which means huge river beside in Yi language), due to the unique terrain here, the inside was wide inside and narrow outside, the only exit was like a bottle mouth with an open lid. In the inside of this bottle, the large fertile fields were washed away by the flood, leaving only large tracts.

The soft sandy land not only does not grow well, but is repeatedly washed away by floods every year. Later, it is gradually abandoned by people. However, this dozens of acres of sand has found the most suitable field for the annual Torch Festival of Li Wei. On this empty sandy land, everyone spontaneously gathers together to fight bulls, race horses, and sing. However, for the villagers of Matou Mountain, the road is a little far away. They have to go down from the top of the mountain to the foot of the mountain, and then climb up after the festival is over, but for the joy of the festival, these are insignificant.

After dinner, the whole family set out early, calling friends along the way, and soon gathered the people in the village. Everyone followed the path at the entrance of the village and laughed. The Luo family and the Li family in the village are two big surnames, and these two families have been intermarried for many years. Many people greeted them along the way. However, because Li Wei and Li Liang had not met each other for too long, Li Wei could only keep laughing at others. Fortunately, their seniority is considered the third generation in their hometown, and most of the people who greeted their brothers were Li Wei's cousins ​​or younger generations. In addition, the introductions between grandma and the others could barely pass by.

Although it is difficult to walk on the mountain road, everyone is in high spirits along the way and feels not tired. They only feel that the sweat from their bodies is very cool under the mountain breeze. After walking through the compact terraces like fish scales, and then passing through the lush pine forest, they arrive unknowingly.

It was only ten o'clock in the morning, but many people had gathered on the river beach. Those people gathered in groups of three or five, standing or sitting, and had already started singing, and the hot Yi family crumbled wine and buckwheat wine were brought up, and they were served in a big earthen bowl. Everyone passed on each other one by one according to the order they sat, regardless of gender, age, and were drunk one by one. Then, the melodious mountain songs began. The tunes of the mountain songs were relatively simple, such as "Seacai Clothes", etc., but the content was different. Most of them were improvised lyrics on the spot, usually duets for men and women, divided into Chinese and Yi. Most of them praised men and women's love or interesting things in life.

The male voice sounds bold and rough, and the female voice is quiet and gentle. If you stop here and then, you will immediately follow it. The ups and downs are like the waves of the rising tide. The whole scene is as lively as the songs of the movie "Liu Sanjie". Every time you finish singing a sing of a cheer, the applause and laughter are thrilling.

The experts looked at the tricks and the laymen watched the fun. Although the grandmother and the others were applauding each other, Li Wei was confused and sat there rubbing his skin. When he was looking at Li Liang, he was lying leisurely and half-lying on the wicker and listened with relish. Now Li Wei felt even more bored. When his grandmother saw Li Wei's restless look, she asked her brother to take Li Wei around. Li Wei and her brother wanted to leave the adults to play far away. It was just right for Li Wei to run away like a foal.

The area of ​​Dawa is very large. In this grand festival, it is already crowded with people and bustling. It is no longer as deserted as usual. Li Wei and his younger brother chased each other and laughed through the carnival crowd. Suddenly, they were blocked by a wall of people. There were still bursts of applause from time to time. This aroused the curiosity of Li Wei and others. Li Wei and others fully developed their flexible specialties and got in in a few seconds. They squeezed in to the front of others and were stunned when they saw Li Wei.

"So amazing..." the younger brother muttered to himself next to Li Wei.

In the middle of the onlookers, a group of people, regardless of gender, age, and formed a huge circle, holding hands, holding hands, dancing happily under the melodious flute beat of a man in the middle of the circle! Yes, this is the Yi Dati dance in Liangshan Prefecture. Dati is a transliteration of the Yi language, meaning ground dance or foot dance. It is a collective dance created based on traditional Yi songs and dances. It is one of the folk dances, with concise and bright movements, melodious and smooth music, rich local atmosphere, and strong color of the times. Dati dance has a long history in Liangshan, with extremely wide mass and high entertainment. Dati dance has a wide variety of Dati dances, and different regions have different characteristics and names, such as "Guozhuang Dance", "Shouwu Dance", "Fight Dance", etc.

This kind of dance is suitable for both men and women, and is not subject to conditions such as environment, time, number of people, props, and musical accompaniment. According to the "Mianning County Chronicle" in the seventh year of Xianfeng (1857), a brief description of the Yi people's style dance, and the image records: "Whenever the Yi people danced to the pot shop during festive events, more than ten men and women wore new clothes, and were dressed in purse and scarves and sang, and they were dancing and singing, turning at the beginning, walking slowly, and then turning at the small jump, laughing and chasing for a long time. At night, a pile of pine firewood was burned, and they walked around the fire, and the lyrics were singing were all based on their own…"

Li Wei watched this sport dance from bottom to big, but this was definitely the most exciting time Li Wei has ever seen. Their movements were also uniform, although they also focused on foot movements, matching the natural swing of their waists, shoulders, and hands. The formation was also single circles, double circles, backs, heart to heart, feet to feet, and dance postures were also magpies climbing the branches, dripping water from the dock, chickens pecking rice, hens squatting in the nest, fly rubbing their feet, etc. Although the movements were still familiar to Li Wei, the feeling of this dance was completely different. Although everyone used the dances to sing and danced with all their hearts, when pursuing the release of feelings, they were inevitably not taking care of the surroundings. Everyone's movements were always uneven and unable to be fully synchronized. Today it was different. Among these men, women, young and old, they were not only expressing their most exciting mentality and rich inner feelings. They were there weak, strong, and soft.

There are strong, relaxed, stretched, astringent, and smooth rhythms! The dance moves are lively and lively, the steps are vigorous and powerful, the movements are hard and soft, the rhythm is clear and bright, and the mutual cooperation is tacit and orderly, with a unique kind of honest, simple, brave and concise temperament. Two thoughts suddenly arose in Li Wei's mind, "It is better to have fun and enjoy everyone than to enjoy themselves" and "practice makes perfect". For dance, skills are a way to express one's feelings, but for art,

Not only do you have to express yourself, but you also have to influence and drive others through yourself! The crowd of onlookers unknowingly joined this passionate world of singing and dancing. Even people like Li Wei who don’t like to dance the tidy dance did not consciously walk into the crowd to dance with all their hearts! Although the movements are clumsy, Li Wei believes that at this moment, no matter who it is, there is only joy in his heart! The dance with great national characteristics is flying with dust on the ground! That passion is enough to make the sun and the moon lose its light!

The carnival had to dance to the fullest, releasing one's passion and passion. Later, Li Wei learned that the group of dancers came from Dashuidong Village on the other side of the mountain. Whenever the village was slack, it would gather together to dance and rehearse, constantly discovering this easy-to-understand Dati dance and adding a free combination of various movements. Finally, this passionate and fancy, gorgeous and simple dance was formed. I heard that this dance had won the group award in the state. Of course, this is already a story.

After the dance, Li Wei and his younger brother were sweating profusely, but they were extremely happy in spirit. Before Li Wei and his friends could rest, the exciting horse racing had already begun. Li Wei and his younger brother really tried their best to seize the advantageous terrain. When they were hungry, they ate a bowl of jelly at the stall on the side of the road. They saw the snow-white jelly with bright red chili oil, green chopped green onion and tender yellow ginger to complement each other, and then put the fried peanuts, soy sauce, vinegar and garlic. They felt a refreshing fragrance that made people's appetite increase. When they were eaten, they felt that the jelly was smooth and refreshing. The seasoning was spicy and slightly sour. Li Wei stopped satisfied after eating three bowls. He asked the vendors to pack and take away a few portions. They couldn't just eat them and ignore their grandma and the others, right?

In this way, the whole family played until it was almost afternoon before they got up. After returning home and had lunch, the favorite program of Li Wei and the children was finally about to start, which was to play with torches. When night fell and darkness enveloped the village, the torches began to shine on the rugged mountain road, just like the stars in the bright starry sky. The children's laughter floated in the fields. In the square in the middle of the village, a pile of huge bonfires were lit. The men, women, young and old in the village gathered together to sing and dance happily around the bonfire and pray for God's blessings. The family was happy and the livestock was prosperous.
Chapter completed!