Watching buffalo fight in festivals is a traditional custom of Zhang ethnic group.

In late March, more than 300,000 local residents and overseas travelers crowded toward a 100-meter-high mountain located at Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region for the four day 2012 Baise Buluotuo Folk Culture Tourism Festival. People burned incense to show respect, sang folk songs, performed lion dances and watched buffalo fight.

For thousands of people from nearby villages, the gathering is not a modern festival but a long-practiced custom. The festival is the most important sacred rite and its history is echoed in the songs performed. The ritual takes place every year from the 19th day of the second month on the lunar calendar, which is believed to be the birth day of Buluotuo, to March 9 on the lunar calendar.

Buluotuo is said to be the creator of the ethnic cultures of the ancient communities in the Pearl River region, such as the Zhuang people, according to the oral literature of the Zhuang ethnic group.

A sculpture of Buluotuo.

Buluotuo was a tribal chief. As he had made great contributions to the history of Zhuang, he was endowed with more cultural significance and was taken as a saint. He was honored as the creator, the first ancestor and the moral model by Zhuang people and others with the same ethnic origin.

Zhuang people, who were good at telling stories through song, created a song about Buluotuo on the basis of some folklores and mythologies. Its main story is about the remarkable achievements of Buluotuo: the genesis and creation of man.

Around the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) period, through word of mouth, the story was recorded in the ancient language of the Zhuang ethnic group and a part of it later turned into the scripture of the folk Mo Religion of the Zhuang people.