Water-Splashing Festival is the most ceremonious traditional festival of the Dai minority. It usually takes place in mid-April of the solar calendar, often ten days before or after the Tomb-sweeping Day, and lasts three to seven days. Water-Splashing Festival is the New Year in the Dai calendar, and also a festival with the largest influence and maximum participating population among lots of minority festivals in Yunnan Province. In this festival, the Dai People without reference to age and sex will get dressed up and shoulder clean water to the Buddhist Temple. They will first bathe the Buddha and then begin to splash water with one another for wishing luck, happiness and health. The more water one person is sprinkled, the more luck he/she receives, and the happier he/she will be. Dai People will also invite people from other ethnic minorities and tourists coming from afar to splash water to celebrate the festival. The scene of water splashing and spraying is really jollifying, and when getting excited, people will burst out the hurrah like "shui (water), shui and shui".
Besides water splashing, there are a lot of other conventions in the Water-splashing Festival. Children will cut down bamboos to make squirt gun and play water game. People without reference to age and sex are all dressed up and climb up the mountain in groups to pick up wild flowers to make flower house. Young people who are not married throw specially-made bags to pay court to each other. And people let off Gaosheng fireworks and Kongming Lamp to memorialize the wisdom of Zhuge Liang in the ancient Three Kingdoms Period. Additionally, there are some other conventions such as Dragon Boat Race, Release of Paper-made River Boat, Peacock Dancing and Cockfighting. In the festival, people will decorate their own residence ceremoniously so that the doorframe and window of every household are pasted with various paper cutting. Decorated archways, whose top stands a golden peacock that symbolizes happiness and good luck, are also put up at the main streets in the town.
Water-Splashing Festival was once a religious ceremony in Indian Brahmanism and then absorbed by Buddhism and passed to the Dai region in Yunnan Province via Burma. It has enjoyed a history of seven hundred years up to now. At present, the convention of water splashing has actually become a form of mutual wishing between one another. In the eye of the Dai People, water is a symbol of sanctity, beauty and brightness. Only water can help everything on the earth grow, so water is the god of life.
