What is Shoton Festival about?

It is a festival celebrated by the Tibetan people.

The Shoton Festival is a national festival for the Tibetan people in Tibet, Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan, Yunnan and other provinces and regions, and is one of the national intangible cultural heritages. "Shoton" means yogurt feast.

In Tibetan, "Snow" means yogurt seeds, and "Dun" means "eating" and "banquet". According to Tibetan explanation, Shoton Festival is a festival for eating yogurt seeds.

Because there are Tibetan opera performances and Buddhist exhibition ceremonies during the Shoton Festival, some people also call it the "Tibetan Opera Festival" and "Buddha Exhibition Festival." In May 2006, the Shoton Festival declared by the Tibet Autonomous Region was approved by the State Council and included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage lists, with heritage number X-31.

The Shoton Festival was a primitive religious festival before the 17th century. According to folklore, as the weather gets warmer in summer, insects start to sting, and everything revives, monks will inevitably trample and kill people when they go out for activities, which is against the " "Do not kill" commandment.

Therefore, the precepts of the Gelug Sect stipulate that from April to June in the Tibetan calendar, monks can only chant sutras and practice in temples, and they can not be allowed to be monks until the end of June. When the ban was lifted, the monks left the temples and went down the mountain one after another. In order to reward the monks, the secular people prepared yogurt, held picnics for them, and performed Tibetan operas at the celebrations. This is the origin of Shoton Festival.

Tibetan opera performances during the festival:

Tibetan opera performances are the essence of the Shoton Festival. After more than 600 years of inheritance and development, traditional Tibetan opera performances demonstrate the charm of Tibetan opera art with its unique dance rhythm, loud singing, gorgeous costumes, simple masks, and colorful plots.

For the Shoton Festival, which is both religious and secular, the annual Tibetan opera performances serve as a hub for communication between gods and humans. The content incorporated into Tibetan opera performances not only has the effect of entertaining gods, but also entertains people.

Tibetan opera performance forms are constantly changing with the trends of the times. For example, from simple square dance to the stage, the biggest feature of its reform, development and innovation is that in addition to retaining some character masks with extremely strong characteristics, most characters, that is, actors no longer perform with masks, but use costumes to perform, and their characters The artistic features are more distinctive.

Reference for the above content: Baidu Encyclopedia - Shoton Festival