Dai people have more than 1000 years of old Dai language and ancient Bayleaf Scriptures. Dai people have their own unique calendar. The difference between Dai calendar and Gregorian calendar is 638 years, that is, Gregorian calendar is 639 years as the first year of Dai calendar. The year of Dai calendar is solar year, but the month is lunar month. Dai calendar is divided into three seasons, from 1 month to April as the cold season, from May to August as the hot season, and from September to1February as the rainy season. Dai people love poetry very much, especially long narrative poems. Narrative poems such as Zhao Shuli, Nan Manna, He E and luo sang are valuable cultural heritage of the Chinese nation. There are many kinds of Dai dances, and their movements and contents mainly imitate the activities of local common animals, and on this basis, they are personalized. Peacock dance not only comes from imitating the graceful movements of peacocks, but also from the beautiful and moving legends of Dai people. The famous dancer Dao Meilan is famous at home and abroad for her performance in peacock dance.
Festivals:
Songkran Festival is the most national festival of Dai people. Songkran Festival is the New Year of Dai calendar, which lasts from June 6th to July 6th, equivalent to April in Gregorian calendar. At the Water-Splashing Festival, people will worship Buddha. The girls will wash the dust for the Buddha with fresh water floating with flowers, then splash water on each other and bless each other. At first, water was splashed with hands and bowls, and then songs were splashed with pots and barrels. The more intense the splashing, the drums, gongs, water splashing and cheers became one. During the Songkran Festival, traditional entertainment activities such as dragon boat racing, flying high and flying lanterns and various song and dance parties will be held.
Folk clothing:
The bamboo building where Dai people live is a dry-column building. The bamboo building is approximately square, supported by dozens of large bamboos, and the floor is suspended; The roof is covered with thatched rows, and the bamboo wall has a large gap, which is both ventilated and light-permeable. The slope on both sides of the roof is very large, showing an "A" shape. The bamboo building is divided into two floors, where people live upstairs, livestock are raised downstairs and sundries are piled up. It's also a place for rice and weaving. Dai men usually wear collarless double-breasted shirts and long-sleeved trousers wrapped in white or blue cloth. Dai women's clothing varies from place to place, but it is basically characterized by bunches of hair, skirts and shirts. The skirt is ankle-deep, the clothes are tight and short, the hem only reaches the waist, but the sleeves are long and narrow.
Diet:
Most Dai people have the habit of eating two meals at a time, with rice and glutinous rice as their staple food. Dehong Dai's staple food is japonica rice, and Xishuangbanna Dai's staple food is glutinous rice. Usually eaten immediately. People think that japonica rice and rice need to be eaten immediately without losing their original color and fragrance, so they don't eat overnight meals or rarely eat them, and they are used to pinching rice with their hands. Migrant workers often eat fish meals in the wild. They make glutinous rice balls out of banana leaves or rice, which can be eaten with salt, pepper, sour meat, roast chicken, Mi Nan (which means sauce in Dai) and moss pine. All dishes and snacks are mainly sour, such as sour bamboo shoots, sour pea powder, sour meat and wild sour fruit; I like to eat pickled cabbage. It is made by drying vegetables, then boiling them in water, adding papaya to make the taste sour, and then drying them and storing them. Put a little stir-fry or put it in soup when eating. This kind of sauerkraut is eaten almost every day by Dai people in some places. It is said that Dai people often eat sauerkraut because they often eat sticky rice food that is not easy to digest, and sour food helps digestion. The daily meat is pigs, cows, chickens and ducks, and don't eat or eat less mutton. Dai people who live in the mainland like to eat dog meat, are good at roast chicken and roast chicken, and are very fond of aquatic products such as fish, shrimp, crab, snails and moss. Eating with moss is a unique flavor dish of Dai people. The moss eaten by the Dai people is the moss on the rocks in the river in spring, preferably dark green. After fishing, tear it into thin slices, dry it, and put it on with a bamboo stick for later use. When cooking, the thick ones are fried and the thin ones are roasted with fire. Crushed into a bowl after crispy, then poured in boiling oil, then stirred with salt, and dipped in glutinous rice balls or bacon, which was extremely delicious. Cooking fish, mostly sour fish or roasted citronella fish, in addition to making fish chops (that is, grilled fish mashed with coriander and other spices), fish jelly, grilled fish, white sauce eel and so on. When eating crabs, they are usually chopped into crab paste with shell and meat for cooking. Dai people call this crab sauce "crab rice cloth". Bitter gourd is a daily vegetable with the highest yield and consumption. In addition to bitter gourd, Xishuangbanna also has a kind of bitter bamboo shoots, so there is also a bitter taste in Dai flavor. The representative bitter vegetable is a mixture of cowhide and cold dishes cooked with ingredients such as ox gall.
Taboo:
It is forbidden for outsiders to ride horses, drive cattle, carry loads and enter the stockade unkempt; When entering the Dai bamboo house, you should take off your shoes outside the door and walk gently inside. You can't sit above or across the fireplace, enter the owner's inner room, or sit on the threshold; The tripod on the fireplace can't move, and the fire can't be pushed; Don't whistle and cut your nails at home; Don't use clothes as pillows, and don't sit on pillows; When hanging clothes, the coat should be hung at a high place, and the pants and skirts should be hung at a low place; Take off your shoes when entering the Buddhist temple, and avoid touching the head, Buddha statue, spear, banner and other Buddhist sacred objects of the young monk. Don't talk loudly at will.
Please refer to Baidu Encyclopedia for more information.