**10. Fall: Preparing the House and Family**

Traditionally, the house cleaning ritual, inviting the gods and armies, and ox sacrifice all occur in February during the lunar New Year.

The following sequence of rituals occurred in October, after harvest season, and climaxed with the water buffalo sacrifice. The eldest son of the sponsoring family invited his uncle-in-law (his mother's eldest brother) to the ritual. A flag was hung at the house's main entrance "for the water buffalo" (Tian 2018b), identifying the family's ritual intent.

The Miao are not strictly defined as matrilineal in classic, anthropological terms. However, throughout my fieldwork with the Miao, I have observed a high degree of gender equity. Women are empowered and enjoy social, economic, and cultural respect, status, and autonomy. This may be attributed to the equanimity, and shared burden required by hardscrabble farming life, where women are "visible contributors to the regional culture and economy" (Faure and Siu in Oakes and Schein 2006, p. 44). "Since ancient time, the Miao have kept a matrilineal tradition and sense of respect for women, which put women before men. Our culture has no derogatory words for women. The divorce rate is nearly zero" (S. Shi 2016). When asked why the importance of women in Miao culture, badai Tian replied, "All comes from our mother. We all come from our mother" (Tian 2018b). The mother's brother is also part of the family, that origin. "Married women and their relatives are key figures in Western Hunan Miao family and communal life, especially maternal uncles, *mujiu* 母 舅; mother's brothers and brothers-in-law *qijiu* 妻 子 的 兄 弟 wife's brothers, often guests of honor at major ritual events like the oxen sacrifice and zhuiniu" (Katz 2022, p. 40).

Miao men are protective of their women, which may have originated at the time garrisoned Han soldiers came to the region several hundred years ago and sexualized Miao women. The eroticization and objectification of Miao women is a perception persisting to this day. Their vigorous, primal, and sensual dancing of Miao women, along with their dialogic love songs, are, in comparison to Han culture, considered sexually alluring and permissive (Rack 2005, p. 59).

The importance of the uncle-in-law is one of many expressions recognizing the importance of women in Miao society.

Miao society today keeps this system. The mother's family is vital, and the uncle represents the mother's family showing respect to the mother's family. Even now, the mother is very important. So, when we say mom, as we Miao do, we always say father and mother as 'baba.' We do not say mama and papa. They are the same. (Peng 2018c)

Once the invitation is sent, the house is prepared for rituals. White fortune paper, representing silver, was burnt outside the house entrance to notify the gods of the family's ritual intent. A goa<sup>t</sup> and rooster, their necks tied with rope, were then led through the house and outside the house's main entrance. "We must let the spirits know. Because we do not know where the spirits are, we take the animals to be where the spirits might be inside to prove the animals are alive and will be offered to the spirits (Tian 2018a). A ritual altar, called the "tali tree," is then set up outside the house's main entrance.
