24 April in Dali

The biggest market in Yunnan, held for centuries in spring in Dali.

Any one going?? or would like to go??

How many days does it last??

San Yue Jie - March Fair - 5 Days beginning the 15th day of March (April 24, 25, 26, 27, 28). The area around the West gate and the street across from the west Gate which is called San Yue Jie is packed. Great for picture taking if you love crowds.

Here is a list of the festivals in Yunnan. The biggest problem for me is finding the solar date that corresponds with the lunar date. However, most chinese people have this feature on their phone and they can easily give you the corresponding date.

www.hugoyunnantravel.com/Festivals.asp

I will be in Dali tomorow as I make my way towards Lincang for the annual - Mo Ni Hei - Mud Festival which begins May 1st.

There are some online calendar converters, like this one:

www.mandarintools.com/calconv_old.html
Western-Chinese Calendar Converter

Due to the pandemic, The Third Moon Fair, aka March (lunar calendar) Street Fair, aka Guanyin (Kwan-yin) Fair has been cancelled along with other public venues. Local vendors were supposed to occupy old town Dali with bustling life for March Fair in mid-April (Georgian calendar). For a while now, tour group ban to Yunnan have been reinstated.

As some may know, Guanyin (the goddess Avalokitesvara) Fair is the biggest week-long festival celebration for the Bai ethnic minority in Dali. Too bad.

Here's a good piece on its...

"History And Origin

Currently there is no reliable record of the start of March Fair. A local legend offers an interesting explanation which goes as follows: At the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, the devil called Luocha occupied the territory of today's Dali and persecuted the common folk. During the zhenguan Period, Kwan-yin from the west(today's India) subdued the devil and saved people from the suffer. Ever since, people would gather at the ancient town, offering vegetables to Kwan-yin. Even though the legend fails to give a reasonable and convincing reason on the history of the occasion. It at least shows the fair was at its first stage related to religion.

Present-day March Fair

Now March Fair has become a prosperous commercial fair with tens of thousands of participants and a total volume of trade of over ten millions each year. Besides the Bai ethnic people, other minority groups such as the Yi, Tibetan, Naxi, Nu, Hui in that region will all throng to the fair that day. During the March Fair, the streets at Dali town are compete with temporally stalls selling a mind-boggling variety of items, highlighted by ethnic minority souvenirs.

Visiting Dali during the March Street Fair is a refreshing experience. It is the best season of the locality. Though lingering traces of snow are still visible at certain less-shone places of the Cangshan Hill, azaleas have come in bloom and the blackish hill looks like a girl’s flushing, pinkish face. Belts of white clouds drift around the hill’s waist, and the Erhai Lake at its foot is dotted with white sails and islands. Water ripples, and the lake looks like a big loving eye, with willow twigs gently brushing against its bank like fluttering eyelashes. The cheerful season makes it an ideal time for a festival like March Street Fair.

Prevalent in Dali, the festival was initially a Buddhist religious event. According to legends, Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva (more popularly known as “Guan-Yin-Pu-Sha” among Han Chinese population) would come to Dali and give preaching to local people. Therefore, at this time every year, believers would set up cloth sheds to worship him, giving rise to an annual Buddhist temple fair where sutras were chanted and offerings made.

It happened that Dali was a traffic hub – the Tea-Horse Trade Route runs through here – and believers who came for the religious events from various parts of the region would carry bundles of commodities for trade. The temple fair has gradually developed into a folk commodity trade fair in western Yunnan with nationwide influence. Dali horses, for example, were traditionally imported to China’s inland regions through this fair.

The fair usually lasts for around a week at the foot of the Cangshan Hill. Attending the fair are not only the Bai people, but also other ethnic groups in nearby regions – the Han, Tibetan, Yi, Naxi, Lisu, and Hui peoples – who get dressed in festive attires, herd livestock and carry forest and farm products and home-made daily necessities for trade, making the square a bustling market place. People trade during the daytime, and indulge themselves in singing and dancing and performances at night. Folk sports like archery, horse racing, and ball games are played, too, adding a touch of masculinity to the soft breeze and sunshine of springtime."

www.yunnanadventure.com/index.php/Festivals/show/id/30.html

Gregorian calendar. Egregious mistake.

And an other dinosaur resurrected ;-)

The Bai ethnic people have been compensated with admission-free passes to most sightseeing attractions in Dali.

A consolatory attempt by the city to "resurrect" the spirit of locals denied of their sanyuejie traditions.

Enjoy the gondola ride sir. Please watch your step ma'am.

As a cautionary aside. What completely wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs wasn't the immediate Chicxulub asteroid impact that created mile-high tsunamis. Rather, the deprivation of light thereafter did them in.

The atmosphere-smothering plum unleashed by the fallout obstructed life nourishing sunlight for a year. Vegetations that relied on photosynthesis withered away. The famine of herbivores led to the demise of carnivores.

A tragic food chain disruption that insidiously brought forth their mass extinction, contrary to the title of David Attenborough's latest documentary:

www.newscientist.com/[...]

Silver lining of this dark backdrop is that the Bai people of Dali will adapt. They will survive. Their winged descendants will take flight above the clouds.