Project overview

Category: local music

Description of our community:

Minhe County is in the east of Qinghai Province, which is one of the vegetable and fruit production areas in the whole province. It’s called the “Door of Qinghai.”The Tu nationality occupies 12% of the whole population, while Hui occupies 46%.

The Nadun Festival (meaning 'entertainment' and 'carnival' in the Tu language) is a unique folk activity among the Tu ethnic people concentrated in the Sanchuan area of Minghe County, Northwest China's Qinghai Province.

The festival is held after harvesting the wheat in the summer, and usually lasts 63 days from July 12 to September 15 on the lunar calendar. It's no wonder that some people call it the longest carnival in the world. Throughout the festival, the whole Tu nationality is in revelry and Tu villages are immersed in thundering drum beatings and a sea of songs.

Summary of Our Project

The Nadun carnival is a kind of mass Dance and drama, which reflects Tu’s politics, economy, culture and evolution. For example, Crop Qi is the reflection of agricultural industry, while Three Generals and Five General are the reflection of social practice, and The General That Killed the Tiger is the reflection of human’s fighting against nature. Our research tries to show the folk culture in our hometown from different aspects. We believe that our team members are trained to improve their communication and problem solving ability.

Our internet access

Our school has broad band system in campus since 2004. All team members come from rural areas, so we have no computers at home. We make use of the lunch hour and other spare time for making web pages.

Problems we have to overcome

This is both an opportunity and challenge for us to participate in Cyber Fair. It’s a good chance for us to show customs and environment in our hometown. In interviewing of Nadun carnival, we face many difficulties, including limited time, many tasks, language barrier, no interview experience and etc. how to adapt to strange environment has become the biggest problem.

Arriving at the village holding Nadun carnival, our first problem is that we are too shy to ask questions to senior artists. Thanks to our teacher, Mr. Qin Yong-lin, introduced several artists to us. When answering questions, those artists speak half Turkish and half mandarin, which is too hard for us to understand. We are afraid that what we guess is wrong. However, the teacher encourages us to repeat the question. Finally, Mr. Qin said that our work is better than expected. The interview not only steels our will, but also broadens our vision.

Our Project Sound Bite

According to interview senior artists and watching dances, we feel the deep history of Nadun, in which The General That Killed the Tiger reflects that the Turkish ancestors change social history; and Crops Qi reflects that the history of local people’s productivity and life. Mr. Ma Guang-xing, the expert of Tu culture, said that Nadun is the living fossil of Tu history. Thus, it is necessary for us to prevent and save this intangible cultural heritage, which is conducive to maintain cultural variety and promote ethnic groups’ prosperity.