Guzang Festival Origins and Development
---------------------------------------- Xijiang Thousand Households Miao Village
No one knows exactly when the Guzang Festival started, only that it has been passed down through generations. Many elders and Guzang leaders recount legends stating that the festival dates back to ancient times when the Miao ancestors, led by their forefather Jiang Yang, began to worship his mother "Mei Bang Mei Liu" (Butterfly Mother). According to the legend, after Jiang Yang and his wife settled down and had children, they enjoyed years of good weather and bountiful harvests. However, during two consecutive years of drought, their crops failed completely. To find out the cause, Jiang Yang consulted a shaman who revealed that Jiang Yang's eldest son had repeatedly stepped on Butterfly Mother’s grave with water buffalo, angering her spirit. The shaman instructed Jiang Yang to sacrifice a water buffalo in her honor during the New Year celebrations. Following this command, the next year was prosperous again. Since then, the Miao ancestors began annual ancestor worship ceremonies.
Years later, inspired by the use of hollowed-out logs as coffins for burial, and combined with their frequent relocations and worship needs, the Miao people carved out cylindrical wooden drums from maple trees, symbolizing Butterfly Mother’s resting place. These drums were covered with animal skin and secured with bamboo nails. They were called Ancestral Drums, representing the dwelling place of ancestral spirits. The Ancestral Drum was a sacred instrument not to be struck casually, except during the ancestor worship festival when the spirits were awakened to enjoy sacrifices and celebrate with their descendants. After the ceremony, the drum was returned to a specially designated cave for safekeeping. Due to prolonged outdoor storage, the drums often needed replacement every few years. Because the Guzang Festival involves rituals such as awakening the drum, replacing the drum, worship, and hiding the drum, it is named accordingly. As it is celebrated by a single drum society, it is also called the Drum Society Festival. Additionally, since it involves worshipping ancestors and celebrating their achievements, it is also known as the Ancestor Worship Festival.
In Li Tinggui’s article "A Brief Discussion on the Social Organization of the Miao People," he points out that the basic unit of Miao ancient society was the drum society. When the Miao ancestors first held ancestor worship activities, they only worshipped female ancestors, and the maple wood drum used by the drum society merely symbolized the resting place of the female ancestor Butterfly Mother. Wei Qiguang mentions in his article "On the Origin of the Miao Drum Society and Yi Lang" that this indicates that the Guzang Festival (Drum Society Festival) originated during the matrilineal clan period of the Miao ancestors, at which time the drum society was an exogamous group.
Later, the Miao ancestors created another type of wooden drum – the Descendant Drum – to worship Jiang Yang and his wife, hoping for prosperity and safety within their clans. This drum could also be used for entertainment during festivals or the Guzang Festival, providing joy for both ancestors and themselves. After the ceremonies and entertainment, the drum could be stored in the house, thus only needing replacement after over a hundred years unless destroyed by fire or war. Experience taught the people that organizing a successful Guzang Festival required the democratic election of a Guzang leader and assistants.
Tang Chunfang writes in "The Significance and Origin of the Miao Drum Worship Festival" that the Miao drum worship custom originated in the early matriarchal period, with the wooden drum evolving from coffins. One of the authors, Li Guozhang, discusses this in "Miao Wooden Drums" and states that the custom of drum concealment was already very prevalent in the Taishan, Lushan, and Yimeng regions of Shandong during the prehistoric era. However, due to limitations in productivity and calendar civilization, the early matriarchal drum worship customs lacked fixed rules, with diverse forms practiced freely. It wasn't until the lunar calendar was established that a more standardized Guzang Festival emerged. The Guzang Festival began with Jiang Yang's worship of Butterfly Mother, likely occurring in the second month when butterflies start to gather nectar. Even today, some Miao villages in Leishan County still celebrate the Guzang Festival in the second month.
Perhaps because of the complexity of holding annual ancestor worship and harvest celebrations, involving numerous rituals like awakening the drum, raising the drum, establishing the drum (rotating the drum), sacrificing to the drum, sending off the drum, and concealing the drum, the Guzang Festival gradually changed to include smaller annual celebrations (Miao New Year) and larger ones every several years (3, 5, 7, 13, or 25 years, currently 13 nominal years in Leishan). This tradition continues to this day.
Later, Chi You, the cultural progenitor of the Miao people, fought against the Yellow Emperor near Zhuolu in Hebei Province. Chi You was defeated and killed in mid-October according to the lunar calendar. His remains were secretly collected by a dragon-totem Miao clan and buried in Puyang, Henan Province. Thereafter, the Miao people began celebrating the New Year in October, the month Chi You was killed, and worshipped Butterfly Mother, Jiang Yang, Chi You, and their clan ancestors. Most Miao villages in Leishan County still follow this tradition, celebrating the Miao New Year and the Guzang Festival in October according to the lunar calendar.
After Chi You's defeat, many Miao ancestors fled and migrated. Clan leaders and village elders decided to separate into different clans and celebrate according to the cyclical years of the Earthly Branches (Chinese zodiac) instead of gathering in their original settlements. Some drums were changed from maple wood (black drum) to nanmu or camphor wood (white drum). White represents snow, symbolizing coldness, sorrow, and grief, marking a mourning ritual. This change occurred because Ying Long intentionally used the maple tree, revered as the drum society tree by the Miao ancestors, to humiliate them. Thus, the Miao avoided using maple wood for drums, opting for nanmu or camphor instead. This explains why there are black and white drums in Miao drum societies, with the white drum evolving from the black drum.
Due to countless long migrations, the Miao clans split up, resulting in different branches living in various places adopting slightly different practices regarding wooden drums. Some still maintain both Ancestral Drums and Descendant Drums, storing them separately in nearby caves and homes; others combine the two, keeping them in drum towers, drum halls, or the homes of respected elders; still others use them both for ancestor worship and as musical instruments for dance accompaniment, as seen in today's Wuliou Village in Leishan County.
Around the time copper drums appeared during the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, the Miao people also began incorporating them into the Guzang Festival. By modern times, some Miao villages even replaced wooden drums with copper ones, storing them in houses. Besides ancestor worship, these drums now serve additional functions such as celebrating harvests, uniting the clan, and providing entertainment, enriching the content and atmosphere of the Guzang Festival.
Today, some Miao villages still follow the procedures of the drum-raising year, drum-turning year, and drum-sending (concealing) year for the Guzang Festival, but most have simplified the three-year cycle into a single celebration in the third year. These various evolutionary processes, from simple to complex and back to simple, can all be observed in the Guzang Festival celebrations held in the Miao villages of Leishan County.
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