Hani people in SW China celebrate farming culture festival

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The Hani ethnic group in southwest China's Yunnan Province on Saturday celebrated their traditional Kaiyangmen Festival, an event held annually to welcome the season of planting rice seedlings.

Kaiyangmen means "opening the door for rice seedlings" in Chinese. Traditionally, it's a sacrificial ceremony to pray for a good harvest and fortune in the coming year.

Singing and dancing to celebrate the festival. /Photo provided to CGTN

The celebration held in Honghe County features distinctive Hani culture.

As well as traditional sacrificial rituals, local people also sang and danced in the terraced paddy fields before planting rice seedlings – a highlight of the whole event.

Dancing in the muddy rice terraced field to express their good wishes for the coming year. /Photo provided to CGTN

The rice terraces in the Honghe Hani Autonomous Prefecture were listed as a world heritage by UNESCO in 2013.

As early as some 1,300 years ago, the Hani people developed a complex system to bring water from the mountaintops to the terraces. They also created an integrated farming system that involves buffalo, duck, fish and other creatures in the fields.

A long-table banquet after the celebrations. /Photo provided to CGTN‍

Today, Kaiyangmen has become an important occasion for local governments to attract tourists from different areas. Experts believe it's also a good way to preserve traditions.

Zhang Tong also contributes to this story.