This ritual was performed on 30 December 1996 in Gnyan thog (Nianduhu) Village, Gnyan thog Township, Tongren County, Rma lho (Huangnan) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, located in the east-central part of Qinghai Province, situated in northwest China. West of the Rong bo River, the village was home to 250 families and had a total population of approximately 1,500. Gnyan thog residents are officially classified as Tu (Monguor), a non-Islamic Mongolic people numbering 190,000 in 1996. They live primarily in Qinghai and Gansu provinces.

The ritual's primary goal is to expel all evil of the past year from the village. The date of the ceremony is the twentieth day of the eleventh lunar month. A paper describing this ritual may be downloaded for free at http://www.digitalhimalaya.com/collections/wutu/docs/wutu_article.pdf.

Photographs of the ritual in 2007 may be viewed at http://www.flickr.com/photos/koknor/sets/72157622451788801/detail/ and provide a comparison to the event in 1996.

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