The New Rice Festival celebrated by the Jingpo people

The illustration below depicts one of the most important and grand traditional festivals of the Jingpo people — the New Rice Festival. The New Rice Festival is generally held in the eighth or ninth lunar month each year. When the rice in the fields is ripe, every household celebrates joyfully. On the day of the festival, people in the village dress up in festival costumes and gather together to celebrate the harvest by pounding new rice. Jingpo women often wear plain black velvet jackets or short jackets with silver bubbles embellished on the chest, red woolen knitted tube skirts tied with a red belt, leggings of the same texture and color as the tube skirt, and red woolen knitted headscarves. They also like to wear silver jewelry. [illustration by Yang Jinghua]