LUO QIE SMILES serenely at the audience, her headdress jingling as she turns to the eight other Yi princesses selected for Liangshan's Torch Festival. 'This isn't the first time I've competed in Xichang,' she says. 'But this is the first time I've had the chance to meet so many important people and had the opportunity to make more out of myself.'
This year's festival marked the first time Yi people from outside Sichuan province have participated in the various annual competitions, partly due to the efforts of Liangshan prefecture party secretary Wu Jingping. After taking office in January, Wu went on a tour of Yi areas throughout southwest China and visited cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong.
His efforts paid off. Yi delegations from Yunnan's Chuxiong and Lijiang counties, Guizhou's Anshun county and tiny remote counties such as Guangxi's Baisi visited the prefecture capital, Xichang, to represent their particular Yi culture and learn from each other.
'I came here to visit my roots and learn more about my people' says Qu Mazhang, a Yi dancer from Baisi county. 'I welcome any Yi to visit us. We have been treated so well by the Liangshan Yi and I want to return the favour.'
The Liangshan Torch Festival, this year held in the second week of August, is part of a series of summer fire-worshipping events throughout southwest China. Torch festivals in Chuxiong, Dali and Lijiang in Yunnan province and in villages around Guizhou province attract tourists and backpackers, as well as thousands of local farmers, townspeople, officials and bored small town youth.
It is a week-long celebration of Yi culture, with traditional dancing, singing, beauty contests, horse racing, wrestling and bullfighting and goatfighting - ending with the lighting of bonfires and a night-time torch parade.