Tujia Sayërhe (Funeral Dance)

The Tujia sayërhe (also "sa'erhe," "beating the funeral drum," or "funeral-leaping dance") is a Tujia word meaning "mourning song," a traditional sacrificial funeral dance of the Tujia people along the Qing River in western Hubei. Its roots reach back to the Sui and Tang, when Tujia forebears already had the custom of beating drums to mourn a parent, "their song a wail, their crowd a leap," which gradually became the leaping funeral dance. It entered the first national ICH list in 2006 under traditional dance, declared by Yichang's Wufeng and Changyang Tujia autonomous counties and Enshi's Badong county.

When an elder dies, neighbours gather of their own accord before the coffin in the family hall, where a lead drummer sings and the crowd joins in; men dance in pairs or weave in fours while women in bright dress look on and cheer, often through the night. The eve before burial is the "great night," when descendants and friends keep vigil, drumming and dancing to send the deceased off noisily, the steps rugged and the singing high and forceful.

Turning mourning into song and dance, sayërhe expresses the Tujia's open-hearted view of life and death as the turning of seasons, standing as a key symbol of Tujia cultural identity and offering unique value for the study of southern minority funeral rites and the archaic form in which song and dance share a single root.