"Miao Mountain Starry Night Feast: A Thousand Lights, a Milky Way, and the Delight of Sour Soup"

Clusters of stilt houses cling to the spine of Leigong Mountain, their eaves catching the last rays of the setting sun. The clanging from the silversmith's shop drifts in and out, like the silver bells on a Miao girl's necklace dancing in the breeze. As I counted the thousand and first flagstone under my feet, the moon rose from the earthenware pot of sour soup fish. At the head of the Wind and Rain Bridge, I met an old Miao woman adorned with jingling silver ornaments. She taught me to identify the stars embroidered on the batik cloth: "This is Altair, and that one is the star formed from the tears of a Miao girl." The smile in her wrinkles shone brighter than her silver crown as she tucked a wild chrysanthemum into my lapel. Suddenly, the lusheng pipes erupted from the ancient singing grounds, and the fragrance of twelve welcoming wines wafted across the terraced fields, startling the shattered moonlight on the Baishui River. As thousands of lights bloomed one after another, the entire mountain range transformed into Miao embroidery cascading into the Milky Way. Red lanterns swayed beneath the eaves of the stilt houses, dyeing the drying indigo cloth with a purple haze. The sweet aroma of rice wine, intertwined with the melodies of ox-horn combs, spilled over the stone steps of the viewing platform. I suddenly understood the Miao people's love for sour flavors—the fiery heat of sour soup fish, the lingering taste of sour bamboo shoots stir-fried with cured meat—a sourness that made one's internal organs dance the Jinji Dance. When the morning mist layered the rice terraces into a thousand-layer emerald cake, the ox-horn trumpets of the Guzang head dispersed the mountain mist. The threads shuttled between the embroiderer's fingertips, stitching last night's Milky Way into the Hundred Birds Clothing. Amidst the lusheng melody, I seemed to see the Butterfly Mother carrying stars across the sea of clouds, while in my bag, half a slice of Miao Mountain moonlight was quietly tucked away.