Torch Festival: The Yi People's Fire Carnival in Liangshan

On the 24th day of the sixth lunar month, usually falling in late July, the mountains of Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in southern Sichuan begin to glow after sunset. Tens of thousands of pine torches move down the hillsides like rivers of fire, converging on village squares where bonfires already roar. A visitor standing in Xichang, the prefecture capital, sees an entire valley flicker orange. This is the Torch Festival, the most important celebration of the Yi people and one of the oldest fire rituals still practiced anywhere in China.

A Festival Older Than Most Dynasties

Chinese ethnographers trace the Torch Festival back roughly two millennia, to the fire veneration of the ancient Qiang-Di peoples from whom the Yi descend. Fire, in traditional Yi cosmology, is both ancestor and guardian. A Yi proverb recorded by folklorists in Liangshan states that the Han people worship the dragon and the Yi worship fire. Every household hearth is treated with ritual respect; letting it die out completely was once considered an omen of family decline.

The festival itself was listed in the first batch of China's national intangible cultural heritage in 2006, and Liangshan has since promoted it as the region's signature cultural event. Xinhua reported that recent editions of the festival in Xichang have drawn over a million visitors during the celebration week.

The Legend of Atilaba

Ask any Yi elder why torches are lit and you will likely hear the story of Atilaba, the wrestler-hero. In the legend, the god of heaven sent a strongman to oppress the people of the mountains. Atilaba defeated him in a wrestling match, and the humiliated deity retaliated by releasing a plague of locusts to devour the crops. Atilaba cut pine branches, bound them into torches, and led villagers through the fields for three nights, burning the insects away. The harvest was saved, and the torch procession has been repeated every year since.

Fire is the soul of the Yi. A house without fire is a body without breath. — Yi folk saying collected in Liangshan oral tradition

The legend encodes something practical. Late July is precisely when insect pests threaten buckwheat and maize in these mountains, and agricultural historians note that torch processions through fields genuinely helped control them. Like many Chinese festivals, myth and farming calendar reinforce each other.

Three Days of Fire

The traditional celebration unfolds over three days, each with its own name and purpose in the Yi language.

• Day one, welcoming the fire: families slaughter chickens or sheep, offer meat and buckwheat cakes to ancestors, and the eldest member kindles a torch from the hearth to bless the house and livestock pens.
• Day two, playing with fire: the great public day. Men compete in wrestling, horse racing and bullfighting; women in embroidered dress dance the graceful Duoluohe circle dance under yellow oil-paper umbrellas.
• Day three, sending off the fire: torches from every household are gathered into one communal bonfire, and the ashes are read for omens of the coming harvest.

Wrestling, Bullfights and the Beauty Contest

Yi wrestling, called gege, is the festival's oldest sport, echoing Atilaba's mythical match. Competitors grip each other's sashes and attempt to throw the opponent; champions win sheep and enormous local prestige. Bullfighting here means bull against bull, not matador against bull. Owners raise fighting bulls for years, and a victorious animal can multiply in value overnight.

The most photographed event is the beauty contest, a tradition said to date back centuries. Young women walk slowly in a circle holding umbrellas, judged on grace, embroidery and bearing by respected elders. Anthropologists point out that the festival long functioned as a courtship fair for young Yi people from scattered mountain villages, and locals still call it the festival for meeting sweethearts.

The Night of a Thousand Torches

After dark on the second and third nights comes the moment everything builds toward. Every family lights torches of dried pine, children carry small ones, and processions snake through fields and lanes before merging on open ground. Participants leap over bonfires for luck, and dancers link hands in expanding circles around the flames. In Xichang's Torch Square, choreographed celebrations now include tens of thousands of participants, while remoter counties like Butuo and Puge preserve rawer village versions that scholars consider closest to the original rite.

Beyond Liangshan

The Torch Festival is not exclusively a Yi affair. The Bai people of Dali in Yunnan celebrate it on the 25th of the sixth lunar month, planting a giant torch dozens of meters tall in the village center. The Naxi, Lisu, Hani and Lahu peoples hold their own versions, each with distinct legends. This spread across southwestern ethnic groups leads researchers to see the festival as a shared inheritance of the ancient Tibeto-Burman speaking peoples of the region, sometimes described in Chinese media as the carnival of the East.

Tradition Meets Tourism

Modern Liangshan faces the familiar tension between preservation and promotion. The prefecture government schedules an official festival week with drone shows and pop concerts alongside the bonfires, and high-speed transport now brings urban tourists deep into the mountains. Some elders grumble that the sacred fire is becoming stage lighting. Yet the household rituals, the ancestor offerings and the village torch processions continue in thousands of communities regardless of the tourist calendar, much as they did before anyone sold a ticket.

For travelers, the festival offers one of China's most visceral cultural experiences: the heat of a hundred bonfires, the smell of pine resin, wrestling matches decided in seconds, and mountainsides alight from valley floor to ridge line. It is a reminder that fire, humanity's oldest technology, remains humanity's oldest celebration too.

Sources: Xinhua News Agency, China Daily, China's National Intangible Cultural Heritage List (2006), Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture government publications.