Geopark & Ethnic Culture
Zhangye National Geopark locates in the middle of Hexi Corridor, north foothill of the Qilian Mountains and region of Linze County and Sunan Yugur Autonomous County. It covers an area of 322 square kilometers and includes Colorful Hills zone, Binggou Danxia zone and Daleibagou zone. Zhangye Global Geopark to be built covers an area of 1289.71 square kilometers, consists of Colorful Hills zone, Binggou Danxia zone, Daleibagou zone and Nine Springs zone. Zhangye Geopark is the only compound zone nationwide that Colorful hills landform and Danxia landform combined together, moreover, with its Nine Springs ophiolite geoheritage, Zhangye Geopark is a comprehensive geological park that integrates scientific nature, uniqueness and rarity. Marvelous scenery, rich geoheritages and unique ethnic customs bring Zhangye Geopark extraordinary resources.
Zhangye Geopark takes advantage of ethnic cultural resources represented by Yugur Ethnic Minority and promotes the combination of geology and culture, further develops ethnic cultural connotation and compound tourism products that contains scenery, ethnic culture and science, effectively achieved the win-win goal of development and prosperity between geopark and ethnic culture.
Ethnic Customs---making geopark more charming
Entering Zhangye Geopark, glaciers and snow-capped mountains, forest and grassland, oasis, colorful hills, Danxia landform, canyons and lakes add radiance and beauty to each other, the nature miraculously combined so many marvelous landscapes together and formed an astonishing picture to humans. In such poetic and picturesque geopark, the Yugu Ethnic Minority which distributed only in Gansu and assembled in Zhangye lives here.
Yugu Ethnic Minority can be originated from the ancient Uighur who live in Mongolia Plateau and Orkhon River around the 7th century. In 840, one tribe of the Uighur came south to Ganzhou and established the Uighur Khanate which ruled 180 years called Hexi Uighur. Later, the ancestors of Yugu moved west to east frequently from Xinjiang to Hexi. In the 15th century, because of war and famine, the Yugu ancestors migrated eastward through great suffering and settled in Hexi Corridor at the foothill of the Qilian Mountains. After People’s Republic of China established, Premier Zhou Enlai fully respected the Yugu’s wish and complied with the pronunciation of their name “Yugur”, gave them a chinese name “Yugu” which means rich and solid.
Yugu is a nomadic nationality settled along water and grassland. During the long historic changes, Yugu Ethnic Minority created fabulous customs and culture, accumulated 29 intangible cultural heritages covering language, literature, customs, religions, songs and dances and other fields, which added a rich and colorful chapter to the Chinese civilization.
Clothing: Yugu clothing is various in colors and styles showing the intelligence of Yugu people. Both men and women of Yugu wear high-collar and buttons-on-the-right gowns. Men wear red and blue belts, decorated with waist knives, fire flickers and mini Buddhist statues, etc., women’s high-collar gowns have slit at bottom and embroideries at cuffs and slits, women also wear head-ornaments decorated with silver medals, corals, agates and shells, and with long leather boots.
Dwelling: Yugu is an ancient nomadic nationality, restricted by their nomadic lives, they live in tents along water and grass. According to Ming Dynasty’s History: The Western StoriesⅡ，the Yugu ancestors in early Ming Dynasty “live in felt tents and without cities.” These portable dwellings are called “Qionglu” in the Huns’ biography. Later, along with the changes of natural environment and grazing, the cow-hair tents replaced felt tents.
In making a cow-hair tent, Yugu people firstly use a crossbeam and two columns to support, then use cow-hair ropes to connect the Hezi(a kind of coarse cloth) together, with the help of 8 poles, the octagonal tent formed. The Yugu’s tents look like simple and crude, but they contain special functions. The cow-hair Hezi is strong and fine and closely woven that can keep out wind and rain, besides, the tents are portable and durable.
Cow-hair tent
Yugu women weaving Hezi
Marriage customs: Yugu marriage, like other nomadic tribes, is evolved gradually from ancient mixed marriage and marriage by capture. Its wedding ceremony is complicated and grand, normally, it lasts for over two days, including 12 procedures and 28 steps, such as wearing a head-ornament, paying farewell to relatives and so on, each procedure has its inheritor to host, and marriage custom is one of important Yugu traditional culture as well.
Yugu wedding ceremony
Offering sacrifices to Ebo: offering sacrifices to Ebo ceremony in Yugu is an important religious activity of ancient ancestors to pray for good weather and disaster relief, nowadays, it evolved as a platform for Yugu people to pray for happiness and peace for both countries and people, and cultural and entertainment activities. Ebo usually is built at hilltop, the position is decided by chanting scriptures, foretelling and other ceremonies. The alter resembles tower, using cypress wood to build square frame and a tall pole with picture of sun and moon in the middle, hanging flags of scriptures and pictures on it, Hada, cow and sheep hair, cloth stripes around it. Large scale Ebo ceremony is held once every year, and other Ebo ceremonies have fixed time.
Ebo ceremony
Food and beverages: Yugu people’s traditional food has unique characteristics and formed northern ethnic food culture. It mainly consists of buttered milk tea, hand-grabbed lamb, roast buns, yogurt, etc.
Hand-grabbed lamb
Yugu people making buttered milk tea
Songs and dances: Yugur folk songs are mainly divided into two parts: melodies and lyrics. Melodies are simple and beautiful, different as “Xiaoqu” “Haozi” “Love songs” “Banquet songs” and so on. The lyrics are rich in content and various in style, covering pastoral songs, epics, labor songs, hymns, wedding songs, religious songs and so on, with vivid, touching, distinctive and unique characteristics, famous as folk song "We Are From Xizhihazhi" and wedding song "Yaoda Qugel". More than 180 folk songs have been collected and among which there are 3 folk songs were compiled in the national intangible cultural heritage protection list.
Yugu stage show
Literature: Yugu folk oral literature is fully developed, including historical legends, folk stories, long narrative poems and folk songs, etc. Folk stories are rich in content and with vivid language. They are widely popular, such as Mora, Archer Shooting geese, Pearl Deer and so on. The most famous narrative poem is Huang Daichen, which describes the unfortunate experience of a young girl in an arranged marriage in the old society. Folk song is one of the most popular oral literary forms of Yugur people, with a wide range of subjects. There are songs about labor work such as felting songs, mowing songs, and wedding songs like headdress songs, farewell songs, and hospitality songs.
Art: Yugu people are good at plastic arts, mainly practical arts and crafts. They weave beautiful patterns on homemade wool pockets, blankets and bridles. Yugu women have absorbed the embroidery technique of the Han nationality and embroidered various flowers, grass, insects, birds, livestock and poultry on women's collars, sleeves and boots. The color is harmonious matching and the image is vivid. Yugu men in Minghua region are also good at root carving. They process the desert-living tree roots according to the original shape, then paint the processed roots, and valuable pieces of art are created.
Yugu embroideries
Festivals: Spring festival is the biggest festival for Yugu people. They make frozen dumplings and fried dessert before Spring Festival, and they also have custom of offering sacrifices to their ancestors. They set off firecrackers, light butter lamps and send each other Hada and gifts presenting their blessings during Spring Festival.
Culture implantation---making geopark more Vigorous
Multi-nationality people inhabit in Zhangye Geopark and create splendid ethnic culture. Zhangye Geopark is tapping into the excellent cultural resources and implanting them into tourism resources development and tourism experience activities, which accumulate endless impetus of geopark to develop further.
Chinese Yugu Custom Corridor area deeply taps the dwelling culture of Yugu ethnic minority and builds the scenic spot of Gaocheqionglu showing profound Yugu culture. According to the characteristic of portable Qionglu(yurt) used by Yugu people, one of geological sites in Zhangye Geopark was named “Gaocheqionglu” according to its image.
Window-lattice and Palace-style Danxia landform in
Zhangye Geopark---Gaocheqionglu
The hats of Yugu women are distinctive. The western Yugu hats are pointed at top while eastern Yugu hats are round at top. The top of the hats is covered by tassels sewed with red thread, that’s why it is called “red tassel hat”. This hat’s distinctive characteristic of red tassels maybe has record 135 million years ago, the stripes on colorful hills just like the red tassels hats of Yugu women. “Yugu Tassels” scenic spot adds cultural charm to the cold geological heritage.
Yugu tassels scenic spot of Colorful Hills Area in Zhangye Geopark
The explanation boards and communication facilities of Kangle and Baiyin Tourism Town, Binggou Danxia Hotel and Chinese Yugu Custom Corridor display the Yugu ethnic cultural characteristics in constructing, which bring more content and angles of experiencing the discovering journey in geopark.
The business units of geopark culture and tourism devote into developing ethnic culture and tourism projects and planning distinctive activities of ethnic customs. The Horse Racing in Chinese Yugu Custom Corridor, Cultural & Art festival of “Colorful Homeland and Holy Place Yugu”, Offering Sacrifices to Ebo, etc., and such cultural feasts continuously enrich tourists’ experiences.
Horse Racing in Chinese Yugu Custom Corridor
Chinese Yugu Custom Corridor area combines splendid scenery with ethnic culture together. Through Hand-grabbed lamb, buttered milk tea, highland barley wine and other special food and beverages, as well as Yugu songs and dances, horse racing and other activities, Yugu culture is fully displayed. Sitting in Yugu yurt and viewing endless grassland, tourists will enjoy themselves without any doubt.
Cultural creative products---accumulating more power to geopark
Culture and tourism development enterprises of Zhangye Geopark actively develop, produce and sell special ethnic cultural creative products more than 200 kinds, such as Yugu handcrafts, ethnic costumes, tapestries, fauna and flora specimens, Tangka, embroideries, leather painting, which has formed cultural tourism products system based on Yugu ethnic culture. Salma Company developed 5 categories and 36 kinds of products based on Yugu ancestors Uyghur, Fuda Company developed 3 categories and 380 kinds of products mainly about embroideries, Yaoer Company developed over 50 products containing Yugu elements, and Plateau Red Company developed embroidery products more than 50 kinds.
Leather carving is an important part of traditional handcraft of Yugu intangible cultural heritage. Its colorful images, smooth stripes and patterns, and bold and forthright style add vigorous and noble spirit to Yugu nomadic lives. Its major raw material is animal skins, using Yang Carving, hollowing and painting as main skills, Yugu people color and decorate it at last.
Yugu embroidery is an important auxiliary handicraft in producing and living of Yugu people, it contains thick local features and ethnic flavor. Its main characteristics are rich in content which focus on human, plants, traditional images and twelve zodiacs, cautious in framing, bright in color and simple in style, and it is used for clothing decoration and daily necessities decoration.
Leather carving products and embroideries sold far away and become an excellent card to promote Zhangye Geopark.
Special song and dance---making geopark full of tension
Zhangye Geopark is located in Zhangye city which has a long history and is a crucial position on ancient Silk Road. Multi nationalities inhabit here and create rich ethnic culture during splendid history. Song and dance shows are the important part of intangible cultural heritage and the significant carrier of history and local ethnic culture.
Until now, on constructing the cultural brand of “Mountains and waters in Sunan, Yugu’s homeland”, deeply tap into advantage resources such as ethnic culture, song & dance culture, clothing culture and custom culture, and successively create a large batch of excellent programs such as grand Yugu musical dance on the Way of Greeting Bride, Yugu Wedding, Blessing Song, grand Yugu stage show Welcome to Yugu Grassland, Auspicious Song, Plateau Human and I Am Yugu Girl. In order to rescue and inherit special ethnic culture and promote international cooperation and communication, Yugu culture is sent overseas actively. Ordered and sent by Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism, ethnic song & dance groups of Sunan County went to perform more than 10 times in many countries like Thailand, Korea, Egypt, Mauritania, Tunisia and domestic metropolises like Beijing, Hongkong, Taiwan successively. Yugu folk songs and clothing inheritors were organized to attend Russian “Communication and Performance of Chinese Folk Artists”, Mongolian “Week of Gansu Provincial Culture”, inner Mongolia Provincial 56 ethnic goups show of “Guarding and helping each other”, Shanghai Yugu folk song show of “National Music • Eagle in Desert”, Giant Intangible Heritage World 2018 Congress in Shanghai and Gansu Provincial “Cultural and Natural Heritage” intangible heritage exhibition, 7 shows have been displayed.
Ancient and still existing nomadic culture and original Yugu customs integrate with splendid scenery of Qilian Mountains, miraculous Colorful Hills, strange and charming Danxia landform, and add radiance and beauty to each other. Ethnic culture takes geological tourism as carrier, promotes many other tourism projects and merchandises with rich ethnic features, making ethnic culture soul and support for tourism creative development, and Zhangye Geopark is more charming due to all these advantages.