The Gelao New Year's Festival is a traditional folk festival of the Gelao people. The New Year's Festival is mainly distributed in Andi Town and Chayuan Township in Jinsha County, Guizhou Province. Chayuan Township in Jinsha County is located in the northeast end of the county. The seat of Chayuan Township is 35 kilometers away from the county seat. The majority of the people in the Yanshi Group of Yongfeng Village, the Changhoubei Group of Xinming Group, the Taiping Group of Chayuan Village and the Lianhe Group of Qixin Village under the jurisdiction of the township are Gelao people. This is the original northern subtropical temperature monsoon zone. Because it is located in the low hills and dams under the mountains, most of the farmland has become dry labor protection land since the Minle Canal was connected. Because the fields are fertile and suitable for the growth of crops such as rice, it plays a unique role in the inheritance of the development of the Gelao culture with a rice planting tradition. The Gelao people are the oldest ethnic group in Jinsha County, and there were records as early as the end of the Spring and Autumn Period. After the Ming Dynasty, the population of the Gelao people began to decrease gradually. In the Qing Dynasty, the Yi Tumu, who dominated the territory, adopted a predatory governance against the Gelao people, causing some of the Gelao people in the jurisdiction to concentrate in Hongzi and Qingmen, where the natural conditions were very bad, while some of them avoided the Tumu's rule and concentrated in the tea gardens located in the mountain fields with relatively stable population development. For more than 300 years, the Gelao people here have celebrated their traditional New Year's Festival. This is the most solemn festival of the Gelao people in the year. Like the New Year of the Han nationality, on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month every year, the Gelao people always invite each other. Except for one person who stays at home to do housework, the rest of them go out, stepping on the land they have cultivated, while watching the fruitful crops, and choosing places to carry out activities, in order to commemorate the ancestors who reclaimed wasteland and grass and celebrate the harvest, and wish for good weather, longevity, and prosperity of livestock in the coming year. The activities of eating new food and celebrating harvest mainly focus on carrying out traditional ethnic sports activities and drinking Zhuanzhuan wine. The number of participants is over a thousand. During the day, the activity of playing "bamboo eggs" (i.e. balls woven with bamboo strips) is carried out. According to custom, the participants are divided into several teams, and the number of people in each team is studied according to the width of the venue. There is no distinction between gender and age, but the number of people on both sides must be equal. The activity is carried out in two forms: "fighting" with a fixed range and "chasing" with an unfixed range. Fighting: The sidelines, bottom lines and center lines are demarcated (shaped like a basketball court). The players of both sides challenge each other in the designated area, and the one who wins is the serving team. The serving team designates a player to hit the ball with his hand to hit the other side, and the other side hits the ball back and forth in the air. If one side serves or hits the ball and hits any player of the other side, it is called "burned down". The one who is burned down will lose once and give the winning team an egg. If the serve or hits the ball beyond the sideline, it is called "leaking hair". If the serve or hits the ball beyond the center line, it is called "inner stuffiness". The "missing hair" and "stuffy" are judged as mistakes, and the winning team serves. According to this clear regulation, the number of "burning" is used to calculate the result of the whole game. The team that eats eggs twelve times is the winner, and the opposite is the loser. The winning and losing records are announced in public. Chasing: The center line is drawn as the boundary, and the baseline is drawn at a distance of 50 meters, 100 meters or more from the center line. The chasing is still carried out by hand hitting the serve. The ball moves back and forth in the air. If the ball lands on one side, that side will immediately chase. The ball moves back and forth in the air. If the ball lands on one side, that side will immediately retreat to defend, and the other team will quickly chase to the landing point and continue to serve and chase. The two sides go back and forth, you retreat and I advance, until the bamboo eggs hit the opponent's baseline and the whole game ends. The team that is chased out of the baseline is the losing team. The losing team is eliminated, and a new team is selected to play, and the winning team starts fighting again. At night, the whole village of Gelao people sat around in their houses to eat "Zhuanzhuan wine", and cooked family dishes while eating. On this happy night, the Gelao people drank "Qingfeng Zhuanzhuan wine" in a happy mood. After two rounds of wine, everyone expressed their views, summarized and exchanged production experiences in the past year, and talked about useful things in life, so as to make greater achievements in the coming year. The Gelao people need to kill animals during the New Year Festival. During the grand festival, there is a saying that cattle are killed to sacrifice to the sky and horses are killed to sacrifice to the earth. At least three animals must be killed, namely pigs, sheep, chickens, etc. At the same time, the activity of picking new things is carried out, picking fresh seasonal crops, mainly rice, corn or other vegetables. The Lao people do not pick new things in their own gardens like other ethnic groups, but can pick them everywhere. If it is rice, there are three eagles for large fields and one eagle for small fields. If it is corn, there are customary regulations such as taking one grain from a large field and a few grains from a small field. It is precisely because the Gelao people are the first ethnic group to open up this place that they have such regulations. On the day of eating new food, people also wear brand new clothes and gather together to carry out various activities, such as singing foreign operas, singing folk songs, blowing bamboo trumpets, dancing Caitang dance, beating bamboo eggs, swinging or shaking autumn, etc. After that, except for one person left at home, all the people in each household will gather at the designated place to carry out activities, and then have a collective meal. The meal on this day is decorated and introduced with the grain obtained from the new harvest, and is cooked together with the old grain. It is truly eating new food. Saving and protecting the unique intangible cultural heritage of the Gelao people, the festival of eating new food, will play an important role in strengthening national unity, entertaining the gods, enriching the cultural life of the people, and building a harmonious socialist society. Although the New Year's Eve Festival is the only traditional festival of the Gelao people in this area, the Gelao New Year's Eve Festival in Jinsha County has been on hold for more than ten years, as the natural leaders of the tribe, such as Zhu Denggao and Liang Mingliang, who were willing to organize it, have passed away one after another. People only kill chickens to offer sacrifices on the day of the festival, and no one has organized large-scale activities. Small and medium-sized activities such as killing animals to pick new things, burning incense and candles, and opening altars to worship ancestors have been intermittent and are on the verge of extinction. (No pictures yet, welcome to provide.) (No pictures yet, welcome to provide.)