Taiwan Festivals

The small harvest ceremony is no longer existed now, and instead, it has become a large group harvest ceremony of the whole village. The period of the ceremony is shorten from one week to one or two days, and it presents more features in the performances of singing and dancing, including millet pounding dance, crops growing dance, hat dance, hair-swinging dance, and warrior dance. Millet pounding dance is the major performance of the harvest ceremony. It is performed by the old, middle age, and young people, representing three generations, and each holds a wooden pestle. They sing and dance while surrounding the mortar, bending over at the waist and pounding the millet in turn. It contains the meaning of passing down the tribe's spirit from generation to generation. Crops growing dance and hat dance are performed separately by the elder and young women. The former one expresses the situation of cultivating crops in the field, and the latter one shows the beauty of Dawu's women. The hair dance is performed by women's swinging their long hair with the meaning of expressing their affection to their husband and the family. The warrior dance is a quite vigorous performance, which makes it another climax of the ceremony.