Mid-summer is not a very busy time in the farmers' annual work cycle, the main crops planted earlier are still growing, or at best just beginning to ripen. Since it’s still the rainy season, construction is put off until autumn. So it is not surprising that this is the time of year when people entertain themselves, when some of their biggest festivals take place. The major celebration of our area, thanks to the large population of one minority group, is the Torch Festival.
Several different stories detail the origin of this festival, but the one we were told while in the village is the most common. They attribute it to the wrath of a deity and the measures taken to counter it. According to them their first ancestor, called Chikareu in Liangshan and Meigo in much of their land, aroused the jealousy of one of heaven’s deities by his success in establishing a lifestyle for his people. The god then challenged this hero to a wrestling match and lost. Angry at this defeat the god dispatched hordes of mosquitoes to plague their people group. But the hero advised the people to light and wave torches to drive them away.
Every year this minority group commemorates their triumph by lighting torches, singing, dancing and staging sporting events like wrestling, pony races and inducing pairs of bulls or goats to square off and dual.