March Street Festival: A carnival of Bai people in Dali

With a history of about one thousand years, the March Street Festival is one the time-honored and most prosperous trade events as well as a magnificent cultural and sports festival of the Bai people living in west Yunnan’s Dali.

The March Street Festival is held from 15th to 21th in every third lunar month, and this year’s festival falls on April 30 to May 6. At the very beginning, the festival was a religious activity, and then it turned into a trading fair where merchants from Yunnan, Sichuan, Tibet, and areas south of the Yangtze River traded local produce, herbs, livestock and general merchandise. In 2008, the festival was inscribed into the list of national-level intangible cultural heritages.

Various activities took place during the festival this year, including specialties selling, horse racing, cycling race around the Erhai Lake, folk singing competition and local operas. It is worth mentioning that a "Internet Plus" program of the March Street Festival was also launched, providing local ethnic cultural products and services online to local residents as well as tourists at home and abroad.

Editor: Wang Shixue