Miao love songs: Wonderful prose in free expressions

In southeast Yunnan’s Maguan County, Miao people show their emotions via creative singing. Every year from the third to the sixth of lunar January, the Miao people’s Huashan Festival kicks off in Maguan County. Thousands of local men and women dress up and gather in the hills where they play lutes, perform Lusheng Dance and sing love songs in pairs.

The Miao people said that most lyrics of their love songs are not confined in length and rhymes, and the singers create the content of lyrics freely based on their ability and inner emotions.

When they sing, Miao people in Maguan use season, flowers and plants, mountains and waters, fish and birds, color clouds and so on to express happiness and auspiciousness. As for something bad, they use night, thunderstorm, jackal, tiger leopard, viper and beast in the metaphor. 

By Yang Xiujie from Daguan Weekly, Photos by Tao Yongshun

Editor: John Li