Miao Tiaohua Festival

The Miao Tiaohua festival is a traditional rite held by Guizhou's Miao people to pray for favourable weather, abundant harvests and thriving livestock; legend traces it to the Miao hero Yang Lu, and the flower-dancing slope outside Anshun's north gate still bears his name. The city holds more than forty dancing sites, with Wayao among the grandest. It entered the second national ICH list in 2008.

During the festival, young Miao men and women gather in festival dress on the flower slope; men play the sheng while women circle in dance, and activities of raising the flower tree, dancing, antiphonal singing and courtship unfold. A saying holds that "if the Miao do not dance the flower, the rice will not bloom," making it a grand rite uniting worship, socialising and courtship.

The festival carries Miao agricultural faith, inter-group exchange and youth courtship customs, an important folkloric sample for the study of Miao society and ethnic interaction, and a cultural thread by which Anshun builds a shared spiritual home among its peoples.