Deng Bin

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Deng Bin, Male, Miao, from Laifeng, Hubei, is a fourth-batch national representative bearer of Dragon Dance (Ⅲ-4). The tradition is documented in Laifeng, Hubei. Within the regional tradition and school record of Dragon Dance in Laifeng, Hubei: The ground dragon lantern is passed down in Dayanban and Banshajie, two neighbouring Tujia mountain villages in Laifeng County in the heart of the Wuling Mountains, where it is locally called “Badisuo”; it is a distinctive folk lantern dance of the Tujia people. A local proverb says: “When Badisuo goes walking, it looks exactly like a real dragon in motion. Dayanban and Banshajie in Laifeng County lie in the heart of the Wuling Mountains, where Tujia villages are built against hills and beside streams, and the ground dragon lantern is locally called “Badisuo.” When the dance team travels from village to village it need not build a stage in advance; threshing floors and courtyard yards can both serve as the opening ground. The arrangement in which the dragon, phoenix and tiger perform on the same stage together with the fish, shrimp and turtle also brings the animals of the mountains, the sky and the marshes into a single ritual scene, reflecting the local religious substratum of the veneration of many gods together. A local proverb says: “When Badisuo goes walking, it looks exactly like a real dragon in motion.” According to the recollections of the elderly performer Li Ying, the ground dragon lantern comes from the Chu Overlord Xiang Yu's legend of “a dragon born of a tiger, raised by a phoenix, shaded by one.” Four or five generations of his family have played the ground dragon lantern, and handed down to the present it has a history of roughly three hundred years.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Male, of Tujia ethnicity, born in September 1932 in Laifeng County, Hubei Province. Influenced by his elders from childhood, he was passionately fond of folk dance arts such as the ground dragon lantern, the bench dragon and the straw-bundle dragon, and trained hard in martial arts until he was strong and agile. He has a thorough command of the ground dragon lantern dance, including the skills of playing the treasure and dancing the dragon head, and twenty-three performance movements and dance routines such as the Dragon Coils around the Tree, the Dragon Crosses the Bridge and the Dragon Walks the Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate. He can climb a ladder of knives barefoot, roll his bare body over broken glass and perform spinning movements high in the air while supporting himself on the tips of knives. In his eighties he remains dedicated to transmitting the tradition, serving as chief instructor at the local dragon lantern transmission base; at festivals he performs the ground dragon lantern from village to village and is deeply loved by the people. Within the documented technical tradition of Dragon Dance in Laifeng, Hubei: Whenever the Spring Festival or the “Dragon Boat Festival” on the fifteenth day of the fifth lunar month comes, the ground dragon lantern teams of the two villages travel from village to village and from hamlet to hamlet, touring the four quarters and winning wide popular favour. Twelve dance routines and movements of the ground dragon lantern survive today; the performing skill is demanding, the performance and its visual appeal are very strong, and the dancing method is distinctive. Where most folk dragon dances hold the dragon aloft with wooden poles, the ground dragon is performed without poles: nine performers hide themselves inside the dragon's body in turn and grasp the belt of the person in front of them, and the dragon rolls and dances entirely by feel and by tacit coordination. Another of its distinctive features is that the dragon dances together with the phoenix and the tiger, later joined by the fish, the shrimp and the turtle, so that animals of the sky, the earth and the sea perform on the same stage. The ground dragon lantern combines the dragon, the phoenix and the tiger into one; it has strong visual appeal and deep cultural content, and at the same time serves the social function of invigorating mass cultural life and promoting harmony among villages and clans. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Ba Di Suo": The local name of the ground dragon lantern in two neighbouring Tujia villages, a distinctive lantern dance performed at New Year and the mid-fifth-month festival. "Nine dancers hidden inside the dragon skin": Its unique method: instead of poles, nine dancers hide inside the skin and grip the belt of the man in front, making the dragon writhe by feel and mutual understanding alone. "Dragon, phoenix and tiger together": Another distinctive feature is that dragon, phoenix and tiger dance together, later joined by fish, shrimps and turtles, uniting sky, earth and sea in one scene. "Dragon coils the tree and walks the taiji": Among the twenty-three movements and routines mastered by the inheritor Deng Bin, twelve of which survive in the dance today.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

National representative bearer of Dragon Dance (Ground Dragon Lantern), a fourth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project.

04 · Associated Heritage Item Dossier

05 · Fellow National Bearers Lineage

National representative bearers recorded under the same item code, ordered from the first to the sixth batch. Batch order is not a teacher–student relationship.

06 · Archival Sources & Bibliography

1. Deng Bin · National Representative Bearer Archive