What do you mean, ten Yi people and nine chickens?

When they get married, they use chickens to symbolize people, and there are many strange and strong wedding customs. They said that the media should bring a "social chicken" (a red rooster) to the bride price, a "parting hen" (a rooster and a hen) to the bride, and a magnificent red rooster, which means "take-off chicken", with the chicken as a symbol of parting. So there is the saying that Yi people have ten people and nine chickens.

Yi people regard chicken as a god bird, a bridge between man and god, man and nature, and take the head, mouth and bone of chicken leg as an important reference for divination. They think that chickens are the most effective birds and can predict the future. Every time the Yi people hold a sacrifice, they will take a liter of rice, put an egg on it and tie a chicken next to it. The most important divination method is chicken bone divination.

Yi people's weddings and funerals, visiting relatives and friends, celebrating festivals and building houses all use chickens for divination. They also regard the chicken as a divine bird, which can predict the future, including its bones, eggs, head and tongue. Yi people believe that fate is related to birds.

Yi people's cultural beliefs

Yi people's worship of nature comes from the concept of animism. In the past, due to the low productivity in Yi areas, people lacked the ability to control nature, so they regarded everything as spiritual things, and they had the same life and will as people. This kind of nature worship developed at the same time as the worship of human soul.

Yi people believe that the soul is attached to the body at birth and exists after death. It is inferred from this concept that everything in the world has a soul, and their activities or natural phenomena are regarded as the result of the domination of the soul, thus forming the worship of nature. It generally exists in Yi society in the form of folk beliefs. There are mainly worship of heaven, earth, water, stone, fire and mountain.