Buluotuo Cultural Tourism Festival 2012 held in Tianyang

As a native Zhuang people of Tianyang, I had realized that there is a very important festival of our own in my hometown and it always happens from the 7th to 9th days of the third lunar month every year since I was still a little girl, but actually never had I been on the scene personally due to the strict school regulations (It's hard to ask for leave except getting ill, I mean). So what I have in mind about the festival all the time is just a sentence summarized from bitty descriptions of others: Tens of thousands of people from my county and our vicinity go to Ganzhuang Mountain to worship Buluotuo (Creator of Zhuang) and hold a folk song fair there on the three days every year. In a word, this festival was just a festival known to only tens of thousands of people before it was announced to be National Cultural Heritage of China and a live telecast of it was broadcast to the world by CCTV 4 in April of 2006.  

Photo: The Opening Ceremony of Buluotuo Cultural Tourism Festival on Ganzhuang Mountain on March 28, 2012. According to official calculation, there are would be about 300,000 people visiting the mountain during the festival.

Photo: Three tremendous incenses are lit in front of a temple on Ganzhuang Mountain.

Photo: An elder Zhuang male is blowing suona, which is a common musical folk instrument in Tianyang. I guess all suona players have a good vital capacity, because each piece music usually lasts for 5-10 minutes and they need to blow it uninterruptedly when playing.

Photo: Two men are wrestling in a shallow pool full of cherry tomatoes, which is one of the local agricultural products of Tianyang as well as one of the favourate fruits.

Photo: There are 15 lion dance teams from Guangxi, Guangdong, Hunan, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macau, Thailand, Singapore and some other regions and countries taking part in the Lion Dance Athletics during the Buluotuo Cultural Tourism Festival this year.

Photo: Tianyang barbecue is what many people look for most at the festival, I guess. There is a joke in mainland China that "Chinese eat everything running on land except cars and everything flying in the sky except planes". It is exaggerated, of course, but Chinese, especially people in Guangdong and Guangxi, do eat many things resisted by westerners. Take the barbecue in my hometown for example, people barbecue chicken/duck claws, duck intestine and tongue, snakes, and many else I can't tell in English. I know these sound crazy for westerners, but I think maybe you can have a taste of barbecued pork, beef, shrimps, chicken's wings, hot dogs, hams, Chinese chives and fried tofu if you pay a visit to my hometown some day, the barbecue really taste great.

--- By Cindy (Visit Our China)