The Yao New Year or the Jia Siang Hiang Festival is an important festival of the year according to the lunar calendar. The festival takes three days: the first day through to the third day of the first lunar month. The importance of the festival is that it marks another beginning in the cycle of life and is an opportunity to appease and express their gratitude to the spirits of their ancestors, the most important activity which is conducted by the village shaman and must be completely performed in the morning of the first day. Moreover, it is the festival of fun and relaxation after some long hard work throughout the year. There are predictions of individual and family lives as well as asking for the blessings from their ancestor spirits. Predictions can be done via the reading of bones and heads of boiled sacrificial chickens. The Water Weighing Ritual is conducted to predict whether water would be more or less abundant in the coming year than the present year. This ethnic group also carries out other wholesome activities for a good life in the coming year. For instance, able-bodied family members get up early with farming tools to ceremoniously clear the land for paddy cultivation, believing that everyone should be hard-working and that young generations are taught how to do rice farming. After that, they collect wild flowers to decorate spiritual altars at home and small stones to put under altars to represent bringing wealth home for a prosperous New Year. In some villages, “The Fire Bathing Ritual” or “Khow Tow” is performed in individual families with the same ancestor spirits in order to strengthen military might and power of their ancestor spirits.