The Li people celebrate the Sanyuesan Festival in Huishan town of Qionghai, South China’s Hainan province, on March 31. [Photo/IC]

The Sanyuesan Festival, which falls on the third day of the third month on the Chinese calendar, is a traditional celebration of the Li ethnic group in Hainan. It is a time to honor their hardworking and courageous ancestors and to express hopes for love, happiness and prosperity.

There are two well-known origin stories behind this festival. According to the first legend, a long time ago, a catastrophic flood devastated the Li community along the banks of the Changhua River, leaving only a brother and sister named Tianfei and Nanyin. As they grew up, they agreed to go their separate ways to seek life partners but promised to reunite every year at the foot of Yanwoling on the third day of the third lunar month. From then on, Tianfei and Nanyin were said to return with their descendants to Yanwoling every year on the agreed date to welcome the arrival of spring. To commemorate them, the Li people named the cave that was said to be their meeting place “Niangmu Cave”, and the date of their reunion evolved into a grand annual festival.

The second legend tells of a malevolent crow evil spirit that once haunted a stone cave and disrupted the peaceful lives of the local people. One day, it captured a beautiful Li maiden named Eniang. On the third day of the third lunar month, her beloved, Agui, climbed the mountain with a dagger and a bow to rescue her, but was tragically killed by the creature. Heartbroken, Eniang waited for the crow to fall asleep, then killed the beast. She never married and returned each year on the same day to the cave — now known as “Eniang Cave” in today’s Changjiang county — to sing the love songs they once shared. The Li people later named the cave in her memory, and the date became a symbol of enduring love and sacrifice.

Since ancient times, the Li community has celebrated the festival with elaborate customs. On the third day of the third lunar month each year, people don traditional attire and get together, bringing bamboo baskets of rice wine and fragrant bamboo-tube rice. Some pay tribute to ancestral spirits; others form groups to sing antiphonal songs, dance, and play traditional percussion instruments. For young men and women, the festival is also a joyful celebration of courtship, expressing love through songs and dances, reveling late into the night, and parting at dawn with promises to reunite the following year.

Rooted deeply in the lives of the Li people, the Sanyuesan Festival enjoys widespread participation and strong cultural resonance. While its celebratory content has become more diverse over time, core elements — such as antiphonal singing, folk sports, traditional dance, and reenactments of marriage customs — remain at the heart of the festivities.

As one of the most vivid and representative expressions of the Li culture, the Sanyuesan Festival stands as a living testimony to the ethnic group’s enduring heritage and communal spirit.

ihchina.cn contributed to the story.