The White-trouser Yao is a branch of the Yao ethnic group, named after the white trousers that men wear to the knee. They mainly live in Baxu, Lihu Yao Ethnic Township, Nandan County in the northwest of Guangxi, and Yaoshan Township, Chaoyang District, Libo County, Guizhou Province, with a total population of about 30,000. The White-trouser Yao is recognized by UNESCO as a nation with the most complete ethnic culture, and is called "the living fossil of human civilization." The famous writer Mr. Zhu Qianhua has a detailed account of the White-trouser Yao in his essay "Lingnan Field Notes." The White-trouser Yao is a branch of the Yao ethnic group, calling themselves "Buno". Because men wear knee-length white trousers, they are called "White-trouser Yao". They mainly live in Baxu, Lihu Yao Ethnic Township, Nandan County in the northwest of Guangxi, and Yaoshan Township, Chaoyang District, Libo County, Guizhou Province, with a total population of about 30,000. The honest, simple, hardworking and brave Baiku Yao mountain people have developed into a well-known mountain ethnic group in the long-term practice of survival. They have attracted much attention from the world for their unique wedding customs, funerals, costumes and other rich and colorful ethnic cultural customs. Marriage customs Baiku Yao people generally marry early. Seventeen to twenty years old is the best age for marriage. After twenty, they are considered old young people. The minds of Baiku Yao men are incredibly open-minded. On the wedding day, they allow the bride to meet her former lover. If a Baiku Yao man cannot tolerate the fact that the bride has a lover before marriage, he will be criticized by people. People will think that this man is not open-minded. On the wedding day, Baiku Yao brides can say their final goodbyes to their former lovers in the eight hours from eight o'clock in the morning to four o'clock in the afternoon. The farewell ceremony is completely open. The bride's family also needs to prepare twenty kilograms of glutinous rice for the bride to use as the last gift to her lover. On the wedding day, two young men stood in front of the groom's house waiting to toast the guests. Every guest who wants to enter the groom's house must pass the "wine" checkpoint set by these two young men. The toast should be drunk in even numbers, which means to drink in pairs. On the second day of the wedding, the bride will return to her parents' home. On the third day, when the groom goes to pick up the bride, the wedding procession and the wedding procession set up a long banquet halfway, which is called halfway wine. When drinking halfway wine, the scene is strange and grand. The Baiku Yao not only has a strange wedding, but also a love process. Baiku Yao young men and women are used to going to the night market. Every market day, after dark, Baiku Yao young men and women in twos and threes flock to the lake to find their loved ones. Under the moonlight, the streets are crowded with people, and Baiku Yao couples can be seen everywhere. When the lovers are in love, they even put their mouths close to each other's ears and sing Yao songs. The singing is very soft, probably only the lovers can hear it, and the streets are full of romance. Baiku Yao generally do not marry outsiders. Funeral customs The Bai Ku Yao people are simple and honest, and their funeral customs are particularly unique. Chopping cattle, playing bronze drums, and dancing the old monkey dance are the rituals of the Bai Ku Yao for the deceased. The entire funeral is tragic and solemn. The atmosphere of the sacrificial scene is solemn and solemn. This traditional funeral custom of the Bai Ku Yao is not only to express the mourning of the deceased by the bereaved family, but also a common ancestor worship activity for everyone. Because they believe that individuals and groups are linked by their ancestors and have trudged side by side in the long river of time. The bronze drums and leather drums in this custom are the main percussion instruments in funeral activities, and they cannot be beaten at will on ordinary days. Legend has it that the bronze drums and leather drums of the Bai Ku Yao were used in ancient times to warn the alarm. Once, the Bai Ku Yao fought with the Tusi. Because they were outnumbered, the leader was seriously injured and had to flee into the mountains. Later, the leader died of hatred due to his serious injuries. In order to worship the leader, the Yao people played drums, cut cattle, and buried him solemnly. From then on, bronze drums and leather drums were associated with sacrifices. When someone in the family dies, the family of the deceased sends someone to report the death to the uncle with a knife for cutting cattle before the funeral. The uncle knew the reason as soon as he saw the knife for cutting cattle. The next day, the uncle led dozens of people, carrying bronze drums and wind buckets, to the deceased's home to beat them. The bronze drum is a sacred object of the Bai Ku Yao. When it is used, people kill chickens, set off firecrackers, and hold a drum-raising ceremony at the place where the bronze drum is buried: "Bronze drum, we come to worship you, please speak, and ask you to tell the ancestors to bless us with good weather and good harvests." After saying these words, the bronze drum is taken out to attend the funeral. After the funeral, a drum-worshiping ceremony is also held to bury the drum so that it will not run away. The day before the cattle-cutting funeral, the bronze drum should be beaten to "open the way" for the deceased, so that more people can hear the drum sound and come to the funeral automatically. In the minds of the Bai Ku Yao, cutting cattle for funeral is a respect and filial piety to the elderly. They believe that cattle are the crystallization of the predecessors' entrepreneurship and should be accompanied by the predecessors. When the cow is butchered, relatives and friends from all over the world come to participate in this solemn ceremony. Before butchering the cow, a wooden stake about 2 meters high is prepared, and a bamboo ring is put on the wooden stake. Then the nose of the cow is tied with an iron ring, and a long hemp rope is tied to the outside of the bamboo ring so that the cow can turn around the wooden stake. Before butchering the cow, the family members of the deceased line up by men and women, and each feeds the cow with the ears of grain in their hands, worships the cow, and cries for the cow. Finally, the witch who presides over the butchering ceremony scatters white rice while reciting the merits of the ancestors, the experience of the deceased, and the remembrance of the deceased by the descendants. After reading, the butcher takes the butcher knife from the uncle and swings the knife to butcher the cow. After tying the cow down, he collects the cow's blood and pours it into the prepared wine, and then puts the cow's blood on bamboo slips to sprinkle, and pays tribute to the drummer, relatives and friends, and everyone. Once the butchering of the cow is over, the second sacrificial ceremony begins, with bronze drums and monkey drums. This ceremony leads the funeral to another 0. Before beating the drum, the drum must be offered sacrifice. The main drummer places the drum in the center of the field surrounded by the bronze drum. The village elder lights three incense sticks, places animals, and offers wine and food to the big drum. After offering sacrifice to the big drum, take a handful of rice wine and offer sacrifice to the bronze drum from left to right, from outside to inside, and from inside to outside, and sing a song to offer sacrifice to the drum. After offering sacrifice to the bronze drum, the main drummer starts the drum, and the horn players enter the field from both sides and blow the horns. The bass of the horn is deep and reverberating, like crying and complaining. After a while, the horn players return to their original positions and the drums start again. The main drummer puts his arms flat and beats another drum. At the same time, he starts to sound the gunshots, from left to right, in sequence. This is the sound of the gunshot to bid farewell to the dead, and also the sound of the gunshot to pray for the blessing of the ancestors. As soon as the gunshots fell, the drums started again. The drumsticks made of rattan hit the drum core, making a dongdong sound. The main drummer jumps with both legs and beats the drum with the drumsticks. The bronze drummers also beat the bronze drums according to the rhythm of the drums. The people who play the bronze drums are all men. They stand on one side of the drum with their left hand holding the drumstick, hitting the drum surface, and the right hand holding the iron wire to lightly hit the drum body. Behind them, there is another person who uses a wooden wind barrel with both hands to receive the sound, shaking it back and forth at a certain rhythm, making the bronze drum resonate in a low voice, and the drum sound echoes in the villages and valleys for dozens of miles. When the mountain people hear the drum sound, they come with bronze drums on their backs or glutinous rice cakes. The drum sound is getting louder and louder, attracting more and more people to attend the funeral, and the funeral ceremony is more solemn and decent. The main drummer directs the bronze drum performance with drum beats while dancing the old monkey dance, expressing the wishes of the people with his dance posture, allowing the soul of the deceased to ascend to heaven, dispelling the shadow of sadness in the hearts of the people, and eliminating disasters. He jumps left and right, with his legs together and slightly bent, and then beats the drum with two mallets, and the small wooden mallets in his hands regularly hit each other from the top of the head, ears, shoulders, thighs, calves and other parts, or circle around the leather drum left or right. The dance moves are like old monkeys climbing and picking fruits, and also like hoeing, digging and planting in agricultural labor, which shows the deep respect of later generations for the hard work of their predecessors. The old monkey dance is also called monkey drum dance, and the locals call it "Bo Zegla", which means imitating the old monkey dance. According to legend, a long time ago, an old Yao man beat a leather drum in the mountains to drive away a group of monkeys that stole soybeans. At first, the monkeys were frightened by the drums and dared not go down the mountain. Later, the naughty monkeys took advantage of his deep sleep and secretly beat the drums to play. After the old man woke up, he felt strange to see the monkeys playing the drums. As he watched, he could not help but be attracted by the monkeys beating the drums and dancing. He secretly memorized these movements, and after returning home, he imitated the old monkeys playing the drums, so there was this monkey drum dance. The low sound of the horn, the clanging of the bronze drums, and the solemn and thick sound of the leather drums echoed in the mountains for a long time, carrying the nostalgia of the people, and resounding into the sky. The White Pants Yao were buried together. All members of the same tribe have fixed cemeteries. The people carried the coffin to the cemetery. After the burial, two round wooden pillars were erected in front of the grave. The wooden pillars were engraved with several lines, and the chopped ox horns were inserted in the middle. The more ox horns there were, the more honorable the deceased was. After the burial, each mourner could get a piece of beef and a ball of glutinous rice according to the rules. The scene of slaughtering cattle for sacrifice in the funeral ceremony of the Bai Ku Yao is very similar to the cattle-slaughtering pattern on the waist of the Han Dynasty bronze drum unearthed in Guangnan, Yunnan. It can be seen that the slaughtering of cattle for funerals of the Bai Ku Yao is an ancient custom of the southern ethnic groups. Mouse catching customs The Bai Ku Yao love to catch mice. According to the characteristics of mice that like to move at night, they put mousetraps in the corners and backs of houses, beside the village, the four corners of the land, or the wild mountains and ridges every evening, laying a net. The mousetraps were collected the next day, and the fewest people got three to five mice each time, and the most people got forty to fifty mice. If all the mice in the village are caught and hunted, they will use their free time to carry their rations and more than 100 mouse traps to other ethnic groups, other townships, or even other counties to catch mice. They will dry the meat while catching them, and often return with a full load. Mouse meat is regarded as a top delicacy by the Bai Ku Yao, and is often reserved for New Year's Day and for entertaining distinguished guests; unmarried men are left to their cousins (lovers) who come to the "Xiang Jia" to "taste their hearts". If the cousin does not get to eat mouse meat when he comes to the "Xiang Jia", he will be regarded as lazy and incompetent, and will be rejected by the woman for marriage, and the original sweet love will be bland from then on. The more mice a young man in a family catches, the more glorious he will be, and the better love he will get. The "trap" used by the Bai Ku Yao to catch mice is both simple and exquisite, shaped like a bow and arrow, the bow is made of bamboo, about three feet long, and the string is made of hemp rope. When catching mice, the left end of the bow is firmly inserted into the soil or cracks in the rocks. Two thin bamboo pieces five inches long and crossed into a scissor shape are tightly tied to the bow arm five inches away from the left bow end; one end of the bow string is tied to the upper end of the bamboo piece leaning to the left, and it is connected to the string line of the right bow end; a double-folded rope loop is tied to the upper end of the bamboo piece leaning to the right, and the rope loop is connected to the left bow end; the two scissor-shaped bamboo pieces are both in the loop and cannot slip out; there is also a finger-sized bamboo loop on the right side of the upper end of the bamboo piece leaning to the right, which can be buckled with a small round bamboo nail tied to the string five inches away to tighten the string (at this time, the string tied to the upper end of the left-leaning bamboo piece is relaxed), and a small bamboo tip is placed horizontally at the lower end of the small round nail in the scissor fork, and the bamboo tip is strung with fried food that mice like to eat. When the greedy mouse puts its head into the scissor fork to bite the food, it touches the horizontal bamboo tip, which then slides out of the scissor fork and pulls the small round bamboo nail. The small round bamboo nail quickly slipped out of the ring, and the point of action of the bowstring elastic force instantly moved to the bamboo piece leaning to the left. The originally loose string suddenly stretched, pulling the bamboo piece leaning to the left to the right. The two bamboo pieces crossed into a scissor shape suddenly closed, and the mouse was caught in the fork and could not move. There is also a touching legend about the Bai Ku Yao catching mice: It is said that in ancient times, a flood swallowed up humans, leaving only the Bai Ku Yao brother and sister. In order to reproduce, the sister gave her preserved cotton seeds to her brother as a love gift. Unexpectedly, the cotton seeds were eaten by mice. The sister was very angry and asked her brother not to get married until the mice were killed. So the brother invented the above-mentioned mousetrap, killed the mice, and gained a beautiful love. The custom of catching mice has been passed down from generation to generation. Baotou’s custom of prohibiting hair When Bai Ku Yao men and women reach adulthood, they will not shave their hair for life. Men use white cloth to twist their hair tightly and coil it from the back of their heads to their foreheads, while women comb their hair into a bun and cover it with a black cloth, and then use white cloth strips sewn at both ends of the black cloth to tie the whole thing tightly. The Baiku Yao call the custom of keeping hair and wearing a headscarf "head-covering and hair-banning", which is very unique among the customs of ethnic minorities in my country. The Baiku Yao cherish their hair very much. Not only do adult men and women cover their heads and hair, but the braids on their heads are no longer shaved or cut. Even the hair that falls off daily is carefully picked up, wrapped in paper, and clamped in the fence for safekeeping.