A fascinating festival welcoming the New Year, the Water Splashing Festival is a much looked forward to event amongst the Chinese. Anantara Xishuangbanna Resort & Spa is a preferred hotel in Yunnan among those who flock to the city in time to witness the festivities as this hotel Yunnan has to offer is placed ideally in the middle of all the happenings so as to not miss anything. The water-splashing Festival is considered to be the most important festival of all by the Dai ethnic community. Held during the sixth month of the Dai calendar, the festival falls mid-April and is also known as the Festuival for Bathing the Buddha. In the Dai language, the festival is also known as “Shanghan”, “Jingbimai” or “Hounan” and lasts for three days in total. The first day sees the people bathing and changing into new cloths to go and worship the Buddha and engage in religious activities. Devotees flock together on temple grounds to make a tower with sand after which they listen to Buddhist scriptures sitting around the sand tower. Afterwards, the Buddha statue is carried out and splashed with water by the village women as a part of ritual. Initially, people gently sprinkled water on each other as a sign of respect as part of a cleansing ritual welcoming the New Year but since the festival falls during the hottest month in South East Asia, people generally end up dousing vehicles and even strangers with water as part of the merrymaking.
Jayani Senanayake is a writer who dabbles in travel and all things exotic. Under the pseudonym of Calliope Sage, she writes of the allures that must simply be discovered.