Amatu Festival of Hani Ethnic Minority in Yuanyang

Amatu Festival is the most splendid of the year for Hani people. In observing the customs of this festival, sacrifices are offered to nature. Besides each Hani stockade is an area of woodland. Tradition requires that it should have one upright tree. Each spring, the religious leader of the stockade will offer sacrifices to the forest and this tree. He will pray for peace for the stockade, health for the people and a good harvest for the terraced fields. As he completes the sacrificial ceremony and returns to the stockade, people will bring wine and dishes of food to the front of his house or some other open place. The people will gather here. The elders will then be invited to sit in the middle. Younger members of the community will then propose toasts and offer them cigarettes and tea. In return they give their blessings. Amatu is an act of striving for harmony between man and nature.

The Amatu Festival is one of the most important for the Hani. It is a kind of homage to the village's goddess. Although there are many legends about the origin of this festival, the most popular one tells how in old times there was a monster that terrified the Hani, because he fed of people. Trying to calm him, the people reached an agreement. The monster will not eat the people, but the village will sacrifice to him two young boys every year.

One year, it was the time to offer to the monster Amatu's two sons. But she, refusing to lose her children, thought a solution. That night she began to sing that the cow meat was much better than that of the people, until the monster believed her. Then, she reached a new agreement. In exchange for stopping to feed of human meat, the village would offer the monster every year, two beautiful maidens like wives.

The monster accepted. Amatu then disguised her two sons like girls, hiding among their clothes sharpened knives. Previously she had instructed them to wait until the monster, drunk for the celebrations of the wedding, go to sleep. Then they must kill him with their knives. The children follow the mother instructions, killing the monster. From then on the Hani people revere Amatu as the protector deity of their villages.

The festival has four steps well defined by the tradition, with diverse activities focused in request the protection for the village, its people, its cultivations and its livestock. It is an eminently agrarian festival.

The festival has suffered a great transformation in the last years, possibly for the need to give him enough interest to be transformed into a tourist attraction. A rite of homage to a feminine deity has become homage to the dragon, in some of whose activities the women are excluded. At night, the youths sing and dance, following the rhythm that mark drums and cymbals.

Thirteen days after the Amatu Festival comes Cow Day. Dozens of Hani stockades around Luchun County will hold a large joint ceremony. Here sacrifice will be offered in a forest beside the county.

The forest was an enormous tree in legend. A Hani girl, after traveling around the world, came back tired and sat down at a spring. She put her hollow reed walking stick into the water. Having drunk to the full, she got up to find the land shrouded in darkness. It turned out that her walking stick had grown into a huge tree cutting out light from both sun and moon. The tree disturbed the normal life of Hani people. They were now in a world without day or night, without time itself. Therefore, the Hani people had to cut down the tree. After carefully studying its roots, stem, branches and leaves, they came to the conclusion that there were 365 days or 12 months in a year and 30 days in a month.

The legend is a good indication of the Hani calendar having been originally derived from nature. Similarly, the development and cultivation of terraced fields arose through learning from and overcoming the challenges of nature.Most Hani people go to Luchun to worship each year. There they collect the bones of sacrificed animals. These are said to help ward off evil spirits and bring people good luck.

Respect for nature is at the core of terraced rice-farming culture and is a major principle of Hani culture. It not only satisfies the religious beliefs of the Hani people, but also brings them tangible benefits.

In Yuanyang County there are two Guanyin (Bodhisattva) Mountains. Each has a Hani stockade at its foot. Solemn rituals are held there each year and sacrifices are offered. The people who live at the foot of Amu Mountain in Honghe County and Huanglian Mountain in Luchun County also observe this ancient custom.