Mosuo people’s reunion dinner besides Lugu Lake

Mosuo people live beside Lugu Lake of Lijiang City, Yunnan. They reunite with their family members during the Spring Festival.

In Mosuo villages, the hostesses use all good ingredients collected in the whole year to cook the reunion dinners on the Spring Festival Eve. Many kinds of meat are included in the dinner, such as chicken, sautéed meat, pork ribs and sausages.

At the Spring Festival Eve’s dinning table, the ritual of respecting the elders is quite obvious. Before dinner, youngsters must send cake, meat and wine to grandparents and the elders in the village. In terms of seat arrangement, the grandmothers and the uncles have to sit in the seats of honor, then the mothers coming next, and last the grandchildren.

Besides, the dishes are divided into portions based on the number of family members, and put on separate plates. The the whole family sit around the fireplace, each having their own plate of dish, a bowl of rice and a bowl of soup. There are certain rules in the serving: chicken legs and pettitoes must be placed in the elders’ plate. 

By Gong Jingyang from Daguan Weekly, Photographs by Liu Jiatong