Tibetan New Year
The Tibetan New Year is celebrated from December 29 till January 15 according to the
Tibetan calendar. All Tibetan families start to prepare holiday food such as bu~ter, milk
tea, Qthgke wine and other food from the middle of December. People thoroughly clean
and dump all the waste at crossroads referring to throwing away all the dirty things
harmful to the happiness and health of the family members on the night of December
29. They also have Guto, a kind of flour food that night. Some dumplings of Guto
contain surprising objects llke stones, charcoal, chili and wool. Family members who
happens to have Gutu with stones will be seen stonehearted in the following year; with
charcoal, crue|-hearted; with chili, sharp-tongued, with wool, kthd-hearted. Each
family member should have nine bowls of food, each bowl must contain some leftovers
to be put into a basin. After the dinner, the basin and a torch in hand, family members
inspect every room called driving-away-ghosts. It is a check of the cleaning and
decoration of rooms actually. People clean up their courtyard and spray water on the
eve. Doors and windows are adorned with colorful fragrant cloths. A sheep head,Qingke wine and a wooden container called Qiema are displayed on a table. The
container, which is engraved with the design of flowers, jewels, tusks and so on, is
fully loaded with buttered Zanba, roasted broad bean and roasted wheat. Ears of
Qingke are stuck into the container.
People burn pine rosin and place dyed Qthgke barley and ears of wheat on the roof
before daybreak on Tibetan New Year's Day. Women carry home buckets of auspicious
water from the river early in the mornthg. The other family members s*ay in bed, wolfing
for the auspicious water to wash their faces. When men and women are all dressed up
with their colorful new clothes, the mother of the family then places the Qiema before
everyone. Each of the members takes a little Zanba out of it while saying prayers like
"all the best" and "Happy New Year". Rather than visiting family members, Tibetans
just stay at home and enjoy holiday food and drinks on tile first day. When relatives and
friends visit each other on the 2nd day, they exchange their greetings. A visitor takes a
fistful of Zanba powder out of a Qiema carried by the host and scatters it in the air. He
repeats it three times and eats the fourth fistful. When a cup of Qingke wine is offered,
be firstly dips his ring finger three times in the wine and flicks it in the air, then he drinks
it up in three mouthfuls. A kind of silk named Hada are presented among close friends.
Hada is a kind of semi-lransparent, colorful damask silk. The most common color is pur~
longer is the Hada offered, the more respectable the receiver. The host and the guest are
free to having food and drinking wine. They may either chat or sing and dance at the
language. Guozbuang dance is originated from people's dancing around a cooking stove.
In the dance, dancers tap their feet on the floor to the music rhythms. Another popular
dance called Xuanzi dance earned its name from a unique Tibetan musical instrument (a
3-stt'inged plucked instrument).
People celebrate the festival by holding sports games like horse racing, archery,
wrestling and yak racing or the activity of folk song competition in some places. They
make bonfires in the evening and revel lale into night.