RaosanlingCustoms of Raosanling

The “Three Sacred Sites” represent three sacred powers on the western shore of Erhai Lake. They include important figures within the distinctive Bai system of Benzhu worship (本主崇拜) as well as Buddhist deities introduced into the Dali region. The temples in which they are enshrined are traditionally known as the Buddha Capital, Divine Capital, and Immortal Capital.

The “Buddha Capital” — Chongsheng Temple, located west of Dali Ancient City beside the Three Pagodas, is the most influential center of Buddhist activity in the Dali region. Chongsheng Temple was first established during the Nanzhao period and later served as a royal monastery of both the Nanzhao and Dali kingdoms. Its iconic Three Pagodas are among Dali’s best-known cultural landmarks.

The “Divine Capital” — Shengyuan Temple, also known as the Qingdong Benzhu Temple, lies in Qingdong Village, Xizhou Town, at the foot of the Cangshan Mountains. It is called the Divine Capital because it enshrines Duan Zongbang, a Qingping official of Nanzhao revered as the Central Benzhu. In Bai folk belief, the temple enshrines Duan Zongbang as the greatest Benzhu in the Dali region, known as the “King of Five Hundred Deities.” Shengyuan Temple is the principal center of Raosanling activities.

The “Immortal Capital” — Jingui Temple, also known as the Erhe Shrine or the Benzhu Temple of Heyicheng Village, is located on the northwestern shore of Erhai Lake. It enshrines the Bai hero Duan Chicheng, and people worship the Sacred Emperor of the Erhe River there.

The term “Three Sacred Sites” first appears in inscriptions from the Ming dynasty concerning temples associated with the three sacred places. Raosanling developed around pilgrimage to these three sites and incorporates Benzhu worship, song and dance performed for the deities, spring outings, and prayers for blessings into a major traditional folk festival and ethnic gathering.

The word “rao” refers to moving forward while singing and dancing. This procession is the central form of the festival: participants arrange themselves in long groups and follow a fixed route between Cangshan and Erhai, singing and dancing while visiting the three temples.

The traditional route has remained essentially unchanged for generations. On the first day, participants travel from the City God Temple in Dali Ancient City to Chongsheng Temple, the Buddha Capital. On the second day, they proceed to the Qingdong Benzhu Temple, the Divine Capital. On the third day, they continue to the Benzhu Temple in Heyicheng, the Immortal Capital, before concluding at the Benzhu Temple in Majiuyi Village. A Bai saying summarizes the itinerary: “On the third day, wander north; on the fourth, wander south; on the fifth, return home.”

Raosanling has also been written or referred to as Raoshanlin, Raosanglin, or Guangshanlin. In the Bai language, it is known as Guanshanglan, or in another transcription, Guaishangna, and has also been called the Rain-Praying Gathering. In Bai, guai means to roam or wander, while shangna is an old Bai term referring to a place associated with courtship and relations between men and women; there is no precise equivalent in modern usage. Most modern scholars regard Raosanling as both an agricultural festival intended to pray for favorable weather and a surviving cultural expression of older traditions in which men and women pursued greater freedom in love and sexuality.

During Raosanling, participation traditionally transcends social status, wealth, and ethnic background. Men and women, young and old, decorate themselves with flowers, wear elaborate makeup, and put on their finest festive clothing. Bai women wear the distinctive headdress associated with the imagery of “wind, flowers, snow, and moon”, brightly colored Bai garments, and silver ornaments that ring at the waist as they move.

Participants approach the festival with enthusiasm and devotion, hoping that sincere worship will bring favorable winds and timely rains, abundant harvests in autumn, and peace and security for their families.

People organize themselves by village into groups ranging from several dozen to more than a hundred participants. They bring ritual implements, simple luggage, food, cooking utensils, and other supplies before traveling from every direction to the gathering. On the morning of the twenty-second day of the fourth lunar month, they assemble at the City God Temple in Dali Ancient City, light incense and candles, and make final preparations.

Each procession prepares props such as willow branches, gourds, colored silk, fly-whisks, fans, and white towels. Various offerings are also carried along the route. Some groups additionally carry statues of their Benzhu deity in the procession.

Early in the morning, adult men and women, including middle-aged and elderly participants from surrounding villages, put on festive attire. Many wear elaborate makeup. They spontaneously form singing and dancing groups organized by village communities, eventually bringing together thousands of participants at the City God Temple near the southern gate of Dali Ancient City.

There they light incense and candles and offer worship to the City God before setting out on three days of procession, music, and dance.

On the first day, participants pass through the Three Pagodas area of Chongsheng Temple, the Buddha Capital, and then travel northward along the foot of the Cangshan Mountains toward Shengyuan Temple in Qingdong, near Xizhou and beneath Wutai Peak. Chongsheng Temple is the most influential Buddhist center in the Dali region. Participants worship and pray there, completing the first stage of their pilgrimage within a sacred Buddhist space.

Shengyuan Temple is called the Divine Capital because it enshrines Duan Zongbang, the Nanzhao Qingping official honored as the Central Benzhu. The temple serves as the central venue of Raosanling.

A widely circulated explanation holds that representatives from the seventy-one villages of Dali symbolically represent their own local Benzhu deities and travel to the Divine Capital to pay homage to the Central Benzhu, praying for a prosperous agricultural year. Bai communities traditionally regard Duan Zongbang, the King of Five Hundred Deities, as the greatest Benzhu of the Dali region.

Participants first burn incense and perform prostrations at Shengyuan Temple, chant sacred texts, and pray for favorable weather, long life, and abundant harvests. Afterward, the temple grounds and surrounding areas become spaces of music and dance. People perform the Bawangbian whip dance, play the money drum, perform fan dances, and sing Bai melodies.

At dusk, cooking fires are set up around the Divine Capital. People prepare meals and spend the night in and around Qingdong Temple, in nearby fields, woods, and open spaces. Singing and dancing may continue throughout the night.

In the evening, young Bai men and women light bonfires on hillsides and among the woods near Qingdong Village, sing Bai songs, and perform the Bawangbian dance. Small groups build fires in fields and forests, boil tea, and cook meals. After eating, older participants may drink tea, play the sanxian, and perform Dabenqu, while young men and women leave with their chosen companions for secluded parts of the woods, where they talk and court one another until dawn.

Throughout the day, participants walk, sing, and dance, accompanied by music and laughter. Friends meet and reminisce, while lovers take the opportunity to express their feelings. The procession is large and energetic.

When the group reaches a village, local residents may deliberately block its progress and send out their best singers and dancers to challenge the visitors in antiphonal singing and dancing. Only after both sides have sung and danced to their satisfaction are the visitors allowed to continue. These encounters often involve teasing, improvisational humor, and playful exchanges that repeatedly provoke laughter from the crowd.

Still singing and dancing, the procession eventually reaches Jingui Temple in Heyicheng Village on the shore of Erhai Lake. The temple, known as the Immortal Capital, enshrines the Bai hero Duan Chicheng, and people worship the Sacred Emperor of the Erhe River there. Ritual worship takes place, while singing and dancing again continue throughout the night as forms of entertainment for both deities and people.

Jingui Temple is also known as the Erhe Shrine and enshrines Duan Chicheng as a Benzhu deity. In Bai folk tradition, Duan Chicheng is remembered as a hero who killed a giant serpent and was subsequently revered as a local protective deity. Here, participants pray to the Sacred Emperor of the Erhe River for safety on the waterways and abundance in fishing and related livelihoods.

During the second night, festivities continue around the Immortal Capital. Villages in the surrounding area hold their own Benzhu worship ceremonies, adding further intensity to the festival atmosphere. People sing and dance through the night, while young men and women engage in antiphonal singing and courtship under the moonlight, expressing strong emotions through music and dance.

The procession returns southward along Erhai’s western shore. Against the bright spring landscape of Cangshan and Erhai, long groups of singers and dancers form a winding single-file “long-snake formation.” Led by the Flower-and-Willow Elders, they continue with music, song, and laughter.

In the villages along the way, travelers purchase objects made by local residents, including imitation copper coins symbolizing protection from evil, sun ointment used for similar protective purposes, small embroidered shoes and garments for children symbolizing women’s health, and flower strings or small angular ornaments symbolizing abundant grain harvests. Participants apply sun ointment to their foreheads and hang floral ornaments from their chests.

The procession finally reaches Majiuyi Village, east of Dali, where participants sing, dance, and pray at the local Benzhu Temple before dispersing. Majiuyi is the final destination of Raosanling and brings the entire circuit to completion. After the last act of worship, participants return to their respective villages.

Over the three days, Raosanling participants travel more than forty kilometers while playing instruments, singing, dancing, and answering one another in antiphonal song.

The route that has become established today begins on the first morning at the City God Temple in Dali Ancient City and proceeds to Chongsheng Temple, the Buddha Capital. After worship and prayers there, participants move north to the Qingdong Benzhu Temple, the Divine Capital. On the second day, they leave Qingdong, reach Xizhou, then turn south toward the Benzhu Temple of Heyicheng, the Immortal Capital. On the third day, they proceed along the western shore of Erhai Lake from Heyicheng to Majiuyi Village and conclude with a final act of worship. Other folk explanations associate the festival with gratitude toward mountains and forests, celebration of harvests, the funeral procession of a benevolent emperor, and prayers for rain and blessings.

At the head of each procession are usually one man and one woman, though sometimes two men or two women, known as the Flower-and-Willow Elders. They wrap their heads in large white cloths, wear snow-white front-opening jackets, brightly colored silk trousers, and colorful sandals decorated with red pom-poms, creating an intentionally humorous and theatrical appearance.

Together they support a willow branch from which hang a gourd and a piece of colored silk. The gourd symbolizes the womb, while the red silk symbolizes menstrual blood. One elder carries a fly-whisk, while the other holds a red fan or waves a white towel. As they dance, they sing a Bai Flower-and-Willow Song in antiphonal form, with humorous and playful lyrics. The melody is known as huo’enku, literally “Flower-and-Willow Song,” and is performed in a lively call-and-response style.

The middle section consists of a flute player and dozens of male and female dancers. Some sing melodies, some perform with Bawangbian bamboo whips, some play octagonal money drums, and others perform the Double Flying Swallows dance.

The Bawangbian is made from hollow bamboo approximately one meter long and divided into four sections. Three groups of copper coins are attached near the upper end and two groups near the lower end. The money drum consists of a wooden frame shaped as an octagon or hexagon, with sheepskin stretched across one side and a diameter of approximately eighteen centimeters. Small rectangular openings are cut into the wooden sections, each containing two copper coins that strike together during movement.

In the dance, women hold the center of the Bawangbian while men hold one corner of the money drum and dance opposite them. The bamboo whip produces sound by striking the ground, being kicked with the feet, and brushing against parts of the body. The money drum is struck with the palms and shoulders, producing a rhythmic booming sound. Men and women bend, stretch, turn, and shift continuously—at times facing heart to heart, at other times standing back to back.

The Bawangbian dance is one of the representative dances of the Bai people and carries rich historical and cultural memory. The octagonal drum dance is often performed together with the Bawangbian and Double Flying Swallows dances, forming the core dance suite of Raosanling.

At the end of the procession is a musician who plays melodies by blowing on a tree leaf, followed by dozens of women who sing and dance while carrying fans or straw hats. Together, all participants form a long single-file snake-like procession, led by the Flower-and-Willow Elders, producing a spring outing that may involve tens of thousands of participants.

The Raosanling dance suite includes four principal forms: the Tree-Holding Dance, Bawangbian Dance, Octagonal Drum Dance, and Double Flying Swallows Dance. The procession follows a fixed order. Two people holding the willow branch lead the group; one sings while the other jokes and teases, forming the Tree-Holding Dance, also popularly known as the Daboqu or Dabaiqu. The willow they carry is itself called the Dabo.

Behind them come several people singing Bai melodies, playing short flutes, or producing music by blowing on leaves. These performances are collectively referred to in folk usage as the Flower-and-Willow Songs. The main body of dancers follows behind.

The Flower-and-Willow Song is one of the most characteristic forms of antiphonal singing in Raosanling. The male and female Flower-and-Willow Elders sing Bai Flower-and-Willow Songs to one another while dancing, using humorous and playful lyrics. These songs are generally love songs sung or exchanged outdoors, often improvised and transmitted orally. Their themes frequently contain openly romantic and erotic elements, and the call-and-response performance is lively and witty.

Raosanling is a major spring gathering of song and dance held by Bai communities around Erhai Lake before the busiest agricultural season begins. Participants sing traditional Bai melodies, especially love songs. When two processions encounter one another, they may challenge each other to antiphonal singing competitions. The sound of Bai songs echoing between Cangshan and Erhai forms one of the festival’s most memorable soundscapes.

Dabenqu is a traditional Bai narrative performing art from the Dali region in which long stories are sung or recited to the accompaniment of the sanxian. Older participants sit drinking tea while playing the instrument and singing Dabenqu. Its repertoire includes historical legends, love stories, and reflections on life, making it an important vehicle for Bai cultural memory.

Zhao Piding, born in 1942 and a Bai native of Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan, is a representative inheritor of Bai Raosanling in the second group of national-level intangible cultural heritage inheritors. He was born into a family of Bai folk performers: his great-grandfather, grandfather, and father were all Dabenqu artists. Growing up in this environment, he developed a strong interest in Bai folk culture and arts from an early age and began performing publicly in 1964. He has mastered the principal ritual procedures of Raosanling as well as male-female antiphonal singing. In 2022, Zhao Piding was included among the 100 nominees for China’s Intangible Cultural Heritage Person of the Year.

The Bawangbian dance is the most representative dance form of Raosanling. In the Bai language, the Bawangbian is known as Dawangbian or Dedidouxue. Dancers hold the bamboo whip and produce rhythmic sounds by striking it against the ground, kicking it, and brushing it across various parts of the body. Typical movements include men and women standing back to back, facing chest to chest, or hooking feet together, expressing strong emotion in a free and uninhibited manner.

The octagonal drum dance is known in Bai as Jinjigu, or “urgent drum.” During the dance, performers strike the money drum with their palms and shoulders, producing repeated resonant beats. The Double Flying Swallows Dance is known in Bai as Shuangfeiyi. Together with the Bawangbian dance, these forms make up the principal body of the Raosanling dance procession.

The Raosanling dance suite is a mass-participation combination dance closely associated with the festival and remains widely practiced in Bai rural communities around Erhai Lake. Different props distinguish the individual dance forms. Movements recorded in Qing-period texts, such as “rotating the arms” and “striking the body to receive the beat,” developed over time into additional techniques such as wrist turns and shoulder sways, eventually producing more than ten standardized movement sequences with names such as “the snake shedding its skin” and “heart to heart.”

In addition to prayers to Benzhu deities for favorable weather, one of the distinctive characteristics of Raosanling is the unusually open and uninhibited expression of romantic and sexual feelings through song and dance. Some unofficial Ming-period writings describe the custom as having been transmitted for thousands of years and speak of people “honoring ancestors and remembering their origins, continuing future generations, men and women delighting in love, singing by day and night without distinction of age, all joining in song between Cangshan and Erhai.”

Most modern scholars regard Raosanling as both an agricultural festival praying for favorable weather and a surviving cultural trace of older traditions in which men and women pursued greater freedom in sexuality and courtship.

One of the largest food-related events during Raosanling is the thousand-person long-street banquet held before the Divine Capital. Qingdong Village is transformed into an open-air theater, and participants enjoy Bai specialties such as hot-and-sour fish and carved-plum wine.

The banquet is not merely a shared meal but also a ritual of community cohesion. More than a thousand people sit around long rows of tables, sharing food and celebrating the festival together.

Participants carry food, cooking utensils, and other necessities with them. At dusk, they set up cooking fires around the Divine Capital. Small groups light bonfires in fields and woods, boil tea, and cook meals. This form of outdoor cooking transforms Raosanling into not only a religious pilgrimage and celebration of song and dance but also a large communal picnic and spring excursion.

Hot-and-sour fish is one of the most representative Bai dishes. Fresh fish from Erhai Lake is cooked with sour papaya, chili peppers, and other ingredients, producing an appetizing balance of sourness and heat.

Carved-plum wine is a traditional Bai fruit wine prepared by soaking green plums carved with decorative patterns in distilled liquor. It has a sweet and mellow flavor. Long-street banquets also feature Bai specialties such as rushan cheese, erkuai rice cakes, and cold chicken rice noodles.

Raosanling is one of the most representative festivals associated with Bai Benzhu culture. The term Benzhu is an abbreviation of expressions meaning the “lord of blessings of this locality” or “lord of the land of this locality.” Benzhu worship is a distinctive Bai folk religious tradition in which every village has its own protective deity. A Benzhu may be a historical figure, ethnic hero, nature deity, or Buddhist divinity and serves as the guardian of the community.

Most of the principal sites visited during Raosanling enshrine major Benzhu deities worshipped by the Bai people of Dali. Raosanling originally developed as a form of ancient Bai religious ritual and incorporates multiple layers of ethnic cultural tradition.

From one perspective, its earliest form has been associated with ancient Bai female worship, forming a foundation for elements of primal religion and sexuality within the festival’s complex belief system. With the development of agrarian society, prayers for rain became attached to Raosanling. During the Tang period, as Buddhism flourished, the festival could also serve as a means of promoting Buddhist belief. When Benzhu worship became especially influential, Raosanling developed as a ceremonial pilgrimage in which local Benzhu deities paid homage to the Central Benzhu.

Archaeological evidence and ancient textual records indicate that inhabitants of the Haimenkou site in Jianchuan had already mastered rice cultivation more than three thousand years ago. Agricultural culture therefore has a very long history in Bai regions.

Raosanling prominently expresses prayers and reverence for agricultural forces associated with rain, sunlight, and the land. The festival takes place from the twenty-third to the twenty-fifth day of the fourth lunar month, immediately before the busy season of rice cultivation. People understood the close relationship between spring and summer rainfall, sunlight, and rice production and believed that sincere worship and the entertainment of deities could bring favorable conditions for agriculture.

Raosanling reflects the Bai people’s energetic, open, and strongly musical cultural character. Its song and dance traditions allow romantic feelings between men and women to be expressed with unusual freedom and spontaneity.

A Bai folk song from the Ming period praises the festival: “Sing all the joyful songs beneath Heaven; men and women, old and young, share the delight; the gathering of the three capitals was established by those of old; when hearts agree, intentions too are joined.”

Traditional Bai dance, antiphonal singing, Dabenqu, Dongjing music, clothing, foodways, and handicrafts are all transmitted and developed within the special cultural space of Raosanling, a space emphasizing relative freedom and equality between people as well as harmony between humanity, nature, and the sacred.