Tian Jingmin

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Tian Jingmin, Male, Tujia, from Youyangtujiazumiaozuzizhi, Chongqing, is a fourth-batch national representative bearer of Tujia Hand-waving Dance (Ⅲ-17). The tradition is documented in Youyangtujiazumiaozuzizhi, Chongqing. Within the regional tradition and school record of Tujia Hand-waving Dance in Youyangtujiazumiaozuzizhi, Chongqing: Thereafter the Tujia Waving Dance was widely transmitted in this area. The Youyang Waving Dance has distinctive national character and local features. Its postures mostly imitate crossing mountains and rivers, farm work, combat stances, an eagle spreading its wings and everyday life; the movements are expansive and dignified, the atmosphere of daily life is strong, and it expresses the rough and uninhibited character of the Tujia people. The Youyang Waving Dance vividly reflects the production and life customs of the Tujia ancestors during the period of farming, fishing and hunting on the Hunan-Hubei-Chongqing-Guizhou border, and epicly expresses the conditions of the Tujia people's long migrations, hunting campaigns, slash-and-burn cultivation, food and daily life.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

From childhood he learned to dance the hand-waving dance to the beat of drums in the hand-waving hall alongside his elders, and he gained a comprehensive command of the essentials of every movement and of the meanings they express. The hand-waving dance that he transmits is archaic and natural, with little variation in its movements; it is vigorous and forceful, advancing and retreating with hands and feet on the same side, the arms never rising above the shoulders nor falling below the knees, and it possesses a distinctive ethnic character and regional flavor. He has long promoted the hand-waving dance within the Tian clan, advancing the transmission and development of the Youyang hand-waving dance. Within the documented technical tradition of Tujia Hand-waving Dance in Youyangtujiazumiaozuzizhi, Chongqing: The Waving Dance, also called 'Shebari', is a ritual collective folk dance performed by the Tujia people in front of the Temple of the Tujia King during the Spring Festival; it is transmitted in the Yongshun, Longshan and Baojing areas of Hunan Province and in the Tujia-inhabited regions along the border of Hubei and Sichuan provinces. The Waving Dance is divided into the 'big waving' and the 'small waving'. The big waving is held once every three to five years, lasts seven or eight days and draws tens of thousands of participants; the performance contains complicated military and hunting content and requires set routines and formations to be displayed. The small waving is held every year in Tujia villages; it takes farming as its main content, and during the dance the participants form several concentric circles, one person leading and the others following, and it is highly improvisational. Youyang, which falls under the municipality of Chongqing, and western Hubei on the upper reaches of the Youshui River share the same veins and the same source of water as the western Hunan mountains downstream. This area belonged to the southern border of the Ba kingdom in the Spring and Autumn period; a county was established here in the Western Han, which within the territory of Hunan Province governed the three counties of Yongshun, Guzhang and Longshan. The Tujia great clans of Peng, Bai and Tian, the ancestors of these families, repeatedly suffered war in the Dongting Lake area and were forced to travel upstream, settling at places such as Kedawa and Houxi in the middle reaches of the Youshui River, bringing with them the rites for sacrificing to the Tujia king and to their ancestors. Its dance movements include more than twenty kinds such as 'single waving', 'double waving', 'jumping fleas', 'driving away the wild boar', 'the beggar warms himself by the fire', 'the crab climbs the tree', 'the rock eagle spreads its wings' and 'the top imperial examination scholar kicks the prefect to death'; its formations include more than thirty kinds such as circular waving, double circles, double copper coins, flower-insertion waving, a single dragon, spiral tops and crossing mountains and rivers. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Shaking fleas, chasing boar, beggar at the fire, crab climbing a tree": Among more than twenty named movements of the Youyang dance, drawn from farm work, animal shapes and folk tales. "Ring, double coin, screw-top formations": Formations such as ring, double coin and screw-top, part of more than thirty arrangements used in the Youyang dance. "The Tian clan migration dance": The inheritor Tian Jingren passed on group dances re-enacting the ancestors' migration, first shown publicly at the county's founding celebration in 1983. "The Peng, Bai and Tian clans along the Youshui": The ancestors of the Peng, Bai and Tian clans moved upstream to the middle Youshui, bringing with them the rites for chieftains and ancestors.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

Male, Tujia ethnicity, born in February 1943 and deceased in January 2014, a native of Youyang Tujia and Miao Autonomous County, Chongqing. National representative bearer of Tujia Hand-waving Dance (Youyang Hand-waving Dance), 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. Tian Jingmin · National Representative Bearer Archive