Torch Festival flames light up more benefits in SW China

CHENGDU, Aug. 14 (Xinhua) -- No one needs an invitation to join the dance around the bonfire, as those watching from the sidelines are drawn into growing circles and hold hands with people beside them.

The participants keep moving to the quickening rhythm of the Dati dance, an iconic traditional communal circle dance of the Yi, an ethnic group in China. Silver ornaments flash in the firelight and pleated skirts swirl as the circles expand.

Such scenes have unfolded across the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in southwest China's Sichuan Province this summer during the Torch Festival, one of the most important traditional celebrations of the Yi communities.

Many rituals remain much as they were in generations past. Around the 24th day of the sixth lunar month, torches are lit with wishes for good fortune, a good harvest and family well-being. Yet the villages illuminated by the flames have taken on a different life.

Liangshan, home to China's largest Yi community, held 98 Torch Festival events across its 17 counties and county-level cities from July to August this year. During festival periods, hotels in several counties reached full occupancy, while bookings in Xichang, the prefectural capital, reached 92 percent.

For many visitors, however, the bonfires are only the beginning. Increasingly, they are venturing beyond festival venues into villages that were once difficult for outsiders to reach.

Sanhe Village in Zhaojue County is one of them.

In 2019, villager Jihao Yeqiu and his family moved into a new 100-square-meter home. Before targeted poverty alleviation efforts, the family's annual per capita income was around 3,000 yuan (about 442 U.S. dollars). By 2025, it had risen to 26,294 yuan.

The family's changing livelihood reflects broader shifts in the village. Sanhe still grows potatoes and buckwheat and raises Wujin pigs, but villagers are also experimenting with winter peaches and red pears.

New ways of selling and processing farm produce are adding value. Last year, a livestreaming sales team purchased about 30 tonnes of locally grown potatoes at four yuan per kilogram, doubling the price previously offered at the field. Free-range Wujin pigs are also being processed into cured pork for markets further afield.

Tourism has become another part of village life. Sanhe received more than 35,000 visits in 2025, while tourism created 25 local jobs.

Nearby Huopu Village has taken a different route. With the help of agricultural researchers, it began trial planting 10 mu, or about 0.67 hectares, of cold-resistant blueberries in 2019. The plantation has since expanded to 1,000 mu.

At the village's higher elevation, the berries ripen mainly from August to October, avoiding the peak marketing period of many other producing areas. Their harvest season now overlaps with the Torch Festival, creating new possibilities for combining farming with rural tourism.

In May, Sanhe and Huopu were among six villages in Sichuan selected as model villages under the Villages Recognition Initiative of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, which highlights rural heritage, innovation and sustainable livelihoods.

Farther in the prefectural capital of Xichang, tourism has brought more visible changes to the Dashiban Community, where many young residents once left to work elsewhere and houses stood vacant.

Since around 2020, historic buildings have been restored and converted into homestays, restaurants and businesses offering traditional-costume photography and other tourism experiences.

The community benefited from around two million visits in 2025. More than 420 young people have returned home to work or start businesses, while tourism-related income now accounts for more than 70 percent of local household earnings.

Beyond the bonfires, local culture is visible in the clothes woven and worn.

Among the crowds, Yi costume inheritor Wmu Ximei is able to identify where in Liangshan an outfit comes from simply by looking at its headdress, colors and patterns.

The former makeup artist from Meigu County began designing traditional clothing in 2012. Over the following decade, she traveled across Liangshan collecting old garments and studying regional variations in Yi attire.

"Many people simply think the patterns look beautiful at first sight," she said.

For those unfamiliar with Yi culture, she explained, the motifs can easily appear to be little more than geometric decoration. But each carries inherited meanings: the fire-striker pattern symbolizes prosperity, the spiral pattern is associated with mountains, flowing water and the continuation of life, while the meander pattern evokes home and protection.

Wmu Ximei has brought Yi attire and style to a wider audience through collaborations with the Chinese edition of Harper's Bazaar and Britain's Glass magazine. To make traditional clothing more suitable for modern life, she has experimented with fabrics, colors and cuts, while insisting that culturally significant motifs retain their original meaning.

"Tradition can be reinterpreted, but its cultural roots should not be erased," she said.

More than 500 young people have learned traditional styling, embroidery and related skills through her training programs, some of which are held directly in villages. Wmu Ximei hopes young women from the mountains can earn an income from the craft while helping to keep it alive.

The market for Yi embroidery is widening as well. A design competition themed on Liangshan Yi embroidery received more than 730 entries in 2025, including submissions from designers in France, Britain and Brazil.

In Yuexi County, the Yi embroidery industry generated 41.8 million yuan in output value in 2025 and directly created jobs for more than 540 people. A local Yi embroidery brand also made its debut at the China Fashion Week this March.

As the craft travels farther, the festival itself is drawing people from farther away.

In neighboring Yunnan Province, Pakistani student Ali Shahid traveled from Kunming to Shilin Yi Autonomous County because he had long been curious about how the Yi people celebrate the Torch Festival.

By day, he explored Shilin's towering karst formations. At night, he joined crowds gathered around blazing bonfires, where local residents and visitors danced together to traditional Yi music.

"The most unforgettable moment was seeing everyone dancing around the fire," Shahid said. "People of different ethnic groups and even different nationalities were all together. Even as a foreigner, I was warmly welcomed to join."

His experience echoed a scene unfolding hundreds of kilometers away in Liangshan: a circle around a fire, widening as more people step in.

The torches are lit much as they were generations ago. What they illuminate today are villages with more ways to make a living, young people taking traditional crafts into new markets, and old traditions finding new places in everyday life.

Around the fire, there is always room for another hand in the circles.