Beats of a different drum

The most interesting event of the Lisu people's traditional Kuoshi festival is the Hair-Combing Contest held on the first and seventh days of the first lunar month.

While men cook breakfast, women dress in bright costumes and put on make up, but don't comb their hair. The whole village gathers to see the women from little girls who have just learnt to comb to elderly ladies who can still hold the comb steady display their long shiny hair and make it into some fancy hairdo.

Staged against blossoming peaches, pear and plum trees, the combing is a way of making a wish: Girls generally wish for love and housewives for happiness, peace and bumper harvest.

This is one of many celebrations by minorities living in Liangshan, which is part of the north-south running Hengduan Mountains bordering the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the Sichuan Basin and the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau.