The costume competition festival is a showcase of Yi traditional culture and a carnival for local people of all ages in Yongren county in Yunnan province's Chuxiong Yi autonomous prefecture. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The event is drawing more people from neighboring villages.

Su Jincong, 26, lives in a village 30 kilometers from Zhiju. He has been attending the ceremony for awhile now. Su says he already has "someone in his heart", but was supposed to seek her for a dance at the event this year.

The tradition is associated with the history of the area. According to local folklore, the first costume competition was held in appreciation of two brothers who discovered fertile land while hunting and helped their tribe build today's Zhiju.

The elderly in the village were keen to find the two heroes good wives, so they organized the competition after hearing that the brothers wished to marry girls dexterous enough to design clothes with the embroidery of flowers.

For both its aesthetic and spiritual value, embroidery is still an important element in the lives of the Yi women.

Li Dongqin is proud of the traditional costume handmade by her mother. The 27-year-old wears it with fashionable makeup and her hair dyed blonde at a salon in a town nearby.

She used to practice embroidery with her mother in Zhiju but was never able to do it as well as her, she says.

It usually takes a long time to master the techniques and patterns of Yi embroidery, but the majority of young women now work outside the village and have little time for it.

"Nothing compares to my mother's embroidery," Li says, adding that her mother makes a special effort to design new patterns on costumes for her. "It simply makes her happy to see me dressed in her handmade clothes."

The "contest" also drew foreign visitors this year. Sam Herman from Israel attended for the first time and says he was impressed by the beauty of the ancient culture.