Miao New Year

Laos is one of the countries with the largest concentrations of Miao people outside China. Miao New Year, also known as Hmong Xyoo Tshiab, is one of the most important festivals in the Miao calendar. As the capital of Laos, Vientiane hosts one of the grandest Miao New Year celebrations, renowned for its lively atmosphere, cultural displays, and large-scale gatherings of the Miao community. One of the most striking features of Miao New Year in Vientiane is the display of brilliantly colored traditional clothing. The Miao are renowned for their finely embroidered garments; different Miao branches have their own distinctive styles, and during New Year celebrations people wear their most magnificent dress, displaying vivid colors, intricate patterns, silver ornaments, headdresses, and other traditional accessories. Rituals form a central part of the festival, including offerings to ancestors and deities—families prepare traditional foods and arrange carefully decorated altars to pray for blessings in the coming year and express gratitude for the harvest of the year just passed. Traditional games and activities provide enjoyable ways for community members to celebrate together. Among the most popular are ball-tossing games, in which small bean-filled bags are thrown toward a series of hoops or targets; traditional Miao music and dance performances are indispensable to the celebrations; and traditional wrestling, known as “Miao wrestling,” is another festival highlight. Food plays a central role in Miao New Year festivities, with traditional dishes prepared and shared among relatives and friends, including Miao sausages, sticky rice, and Miao-style soups and stews. The communal character of the festival is reinforced through shared meals and social gatherings—relatives and friends come together for feasts, exchange gifts, and celebrate the New Year.

Thailand has a large Miao community, mainly distributed across the mountainous regions of the north, with Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai among the principal centers. The history of Thailand’s Miao population can be traced to migration from southwest China from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, giving the community a history of more than a century. Miao New Year is the grandest festival of the Miao people in Thailand and is held on the fifteenth day of the twelfth lunar month. Celebrations last for more than five days and include ancestral rites, banquets for guests, and numerous forms of entertainment, with the entire village taking part in ceremonial dress. Festival activities include striking gongs, tossing embroidered balls, playing the lusheng, bullfighting, cockfighting, and more. In the culture of Thailand’s Miao people, lusheng dance lies at the heart of both funerals and festivals, and lusheng melodies are an important vehicle of cultural transmission. Thailand’s Miao communities have also attracted Miao people from around the world through gatherings promoted as “Miao people from across the world reunite in Thailand for Miao New Year.” According to records, from January 7 to 13, 2021, Miao people from around the world gathered in Thailand to celebrate Miao New Year. Such transnational gatherings have made Thailand an important node in global Miao cultural exchange.

In Vietnam, an important Miao festival corresponds to China’s Huashan Festival (花山节) and is generally held from the third to the tenth day of the first lunar month. Vietnamese Miao communities also celebrate the Shicheng Festival (十成节), a traditional harvest festival observed in parts of southern China and Vietnam by several ethnic groups, including Han communities in some areas as well as Zhuang, Yi, Hani, Jing, Miao, and others. Among the Miao, the Shicheng Festival is the most important festival and is known as Bagu Festival (罢谷节) or Jiyang Festival (祭仰节).

In China, Miao New Year is the grandest festival in places such as the Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture of Guizhou and Rongshui Miao Autonomous County in Guangxi. Leishan Miao New Year: an intangible-heritage parade of tens of thousands. Leishan County was one of the main gathering points of the fifth great migration of the Miao people in China. Miao residents account for 84% of the county’s total population, and the area has long been known as a “sacred land of the Miao frontier.” On November 4, 2025, Leishan County was immersed in the bustle and anticipation preceding the festival, as it prepared to formally launch a Miao New Year celebration lasting more than a month. Tens of thousands of people gathered there, rehearsing intensively in preparation for a spectacular “intangible-heritage parade of tens of thousands.” In 2017, the Leishan Miao New Year Intangible Cultural Heritage Showcase opened on a grand scale. Miao celebration groups from more than 20 countries and regions, including the United States, Canada, Australia, Thailand, France, and Laos, gathered in Leishan to celebrate Miao New Year together with 160,000 Miao people of Leishan. The parade, stretching for several kilometers and involving tens of thousands of participants, incorporated displays of Leishan County’s 13 national-level intangible cultural heritage items—including a five-starred red flag embroidered using multiple Miao embroidery techniques, a gigantic silver headdress 1.5 meters in diameter, and an enormous Miao wooden drum so heavy that more than a dozen strong Miao men were needed to carry it. The lusheng sounded melodiously, bronze drums rang with force, silver bells rustled, embroidered skirts swirled through the air—at that moment, Leishan truly lived up to its reputation as a global showcase center for Miao culture. During Miao New Year, traditional entertainment also includes bullfighting, horse racing, bird fighting, lusheng dancing, and drum dancing. The festival is an important window for the concentrated display of intangible cultural heritage such as Miao clothing, silverwork, and embroidery. Rongshui Miao New Year: “Da Tongnian” and the experience of French artists. Rongshui Miao Autonomous County in Liuzhou, Guangxi, is another important center of Miao New Year celebrations. In December 2025, a group of French artists traveled to Mengwu Miao Village in Rongshui to experience the Miao celebration of “Miao New Year · Da Tongnian (打同年)”, encountering the essence of original local culture and art. On January 20, 2026, during the Great Cold solar term, Dangjiu Village in Gandong Township, Rongshui County, held its traditional Miao New Year celebration. Local residents and visitors played the lusheng, sang Miao songs, performed Miao dances, and shared a hundred-family banquet amid cold winds and light rain. Mengwu Miao Village in Shuanglonggou, Rongshui, is a new village established through relocation for poverty alleviation. There, around one hundred local Miao people and visitors gathered joyfully to “Da Tongnian,” welcoming the New Year in the traditional Miao way. At a Da Tongnian event held in Baiyun Township in 2024, more than 40 media organizations broadcast the celebration live to global audiences, attracting more than five million viewers in a single broadcast. The custom has already moved beyond the boundaries of Miao villages, with Dong, Yao, Zhuang, and other ethnic groups joining the celebrations.