Qinghai Shaman Festival

The little-known glu rol, or "sixth lunar month festival? in Qinghai province's Langjia village is a spectacular affair replete with ancient customs.

Two boisterous crowds led by mediums representing the mountain gods met up in the center of the village, while women stood reverentially by the roadside holding milk and liquor. Accompanied by cymbals and gongs, the two mediums sprinkled the milk and liquor on the ground and danced as the crowd shrieked.

The tribal dance at Langjia village, Tongren county, Qinghai province, was part of celebrations for the glu rol, or "sixth lunar month festival", which few outsiders had seen before the 1990s.

Celebrated by the Tibetans for a number of days every summer, the festival retains ancient customs that predate Tibetan Buddhism.

According to an anthropological report, the people of Langjia lived according to tribal customs before the 1960s, and the current division of villages is based on the original tribes. Thus each village has its own tutelary gods and related rituals.

Langjia is one of the tribe-villages, where two shrines are dedicated to the local mountain gods - Anilari (the mountain to the east of the village) and Ani'anhua (the mountain to the south of the village).

The two mediums representing the two gods were both in their 30s and appeared to be possessed. They performed a set of complicated dances and put ceremonial scarves around each other's necks.

One of the mediums had an unusual hair-style as he had his forehead shaved, like people from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

"He still lives in the past," a villager told me.

To me, the whole scene seemed to be something from the past, except for a few tourists taking pictures. Some got too close to the mediums and were hit by their drumsticks.

The medium with a shaved forehead, who was possessed by the south mountain god, turned out to be principal for the day.

He danced his way to a square beside the shrine of his deity, where dancers from the village formed three circles, the one at the core made up of young boys. Dancers swirled in one direction and then the other, during which they would point their hands up to the sky.

With a stick in hand, the medium supervised in the center and beat people who were not dancing well enough. Two assistants accompanied him, wiping off his sweat and preventing him from becoming too excited.

After a while, the medium came up with a bundle of skewer-like metal sticks and made a sign for the dancers to approach. The medium quickly pierced the cheek of one of them with a metal stick. Other dancers came to the medium but he only selected some of them for the piercing ritual and turned away the others.

The medium pierced about a dozen men, who were now dancing with the metal sticks, which had red ribbons attached.

"Is it painful?" I asked a man beside me.

"No, it doesn't really hurt. You just feel a little 'spicy'," he said, recalling his own experience from a few years ago. "To have your cheek pierced through brings good luck."

He also told me that normally the man whose cheek was pierced would not bleed, unless he had done something unclean the day before, like having sex.

I saw blood on the cheeks of at least two men in the dancing group.

Then the medium climbed onto a pole. While the crowd screamed he took out a knife and cut his own forehead. He made about 10 cuts before falling to the ground.

As he started dancing again blood flew all over his face and stained his clothes and others near him. He sprayed liquor into the air that fell on people's heads.

The original circles of the dancers were broken and the cheering crowd was now dancing in a cluster. Then, rain fell from the sunny sky. The sun was still shining, but raindrops kept falling, making the crowd even more excited.

I had heard the "sixth lunar month festival" often involves witchcraft and praying for rain, as the festival is held before harvesting.

The rain stopped after a few minutes. Was it a result of the medium's incantation and the deity's power? Or was it a coincidence? I don't know.

At sunset, the day's ritual came to an end, and villagers joined their relatives and friends for banquets. The medium, who was no longer possessed, chatted like any other person as he walked back to the shrine.

I was invited to a household where a group of young men were partying. Some of them work in the town and came back for the festival.

"Blood makes the deities happy," a high school teacher from the town of Tongren told me when I asked about the medium cutting his forehead.

He said the medium did not earn money from performing rituals, but has to farm like everybody else.

"Do you know him?" I asked.

"I know him when he is not possessed," the teacher replied.

The next day, it was the other medium's turn to carry out a similar blood sacrifice, but the day's focal point came after that, as people moved to an uphill square to begin a new round of dancing.

Compared to the previous day, the atmosphere was more relaxed. The villagers seemed to have finished entertaining the gods and were entertaining themselves now.

A group of girls danced with slow, graceful steps, while other villagers sat in the shade of trees and enjoyed food and drink from stalls set up to cater to the festival crowds.

Then some young men sang love songs, which are usually forbidden in public, because they would embarrass relatives. Now, at festival time, the singers compromised with the customs by covering their faces with towels.

A few young men ran around the dancers' circle, using a thick stick to poke at the private parts of a wooden woman figure and arouse much laughter. It reminded me of the anthropological report I had read dealing with reproduction worship in the sixth lunar month festival.

Next came a men's group dance, which was much faster and improvised. The medium with a shaved forehead was also in the group, but he now acted more like a member of the group rather than the supervisor.

As exhausted dancers stopped one by one, the group became smaller until there was only one dancer left, who soloed for several minutes.

While the spectators clapped he performed some dance movements that should have won him a national folk dancing award, and thus ended the day's rituals.
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