Yang Jiadian

01 · Lineage & Regional School

After graduating from junior middle school in 1980, he formally studied the tiger sheng under his masters Yang Xuechang and Miao Hu and his father Yang Zhengxue. Within the regional tradition and school record of Yi Laohusheng in Shuangbai, Yunnan: The tiger lusheng circulates mainly among the Yi villages such as Xiaomai Chong in Shuangbai County, and the Shuangbai County Cultural Centre is the protecting unit. The tiger lusheng team in the village is led by Yang Jiadian, who comes from a family of Bimo ritual specialists; the members are assigned their parts and dress up as eight tigers, two cats, two mountain gods, one Taoist, together with the drummer and the gong striker. The tiger lusheng originated among the Yi villages around Xiaomai Chong in Shuangbai County and is closely bound up with the local Bimo sacrificial system. Shuangbai lies at the eastern foot of the Ailao Mountains and is one of the main places where the Yi creation epic Chamu circulates; the veneration of and respect for the tiger has been handed down from generation to generation in the Yi villages of this area.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Male, Yi ethnicity, born in July 1962, a native of Shuangbai County, Yunnan Province. Born into a Yi bimo (priest) family, he was influenced by his elders from childhood and has loved dancing the tiger sheng ever since. He has a thorough command of the whole set of dances and ritual procedures of the tiger rites held from the eighth to the fifteenth day of the first lunar month — welcoming the tiger, sacrificing to the tiger, dancing the tiger and sending the tiger off — and later became leader of the Yi tiger sheng team of Xiaomaichong Village. He has led the tiger sheng team in many performances and competitions, extending the renown of the Yi tiger sheng. Within the documented technical tradition of Yi Laohusheng in Shuangbai, Yunnan: The Yi tiger lusheng is a dance that is at once sacrificial and for self-entertainment, and it circulates mainly in Shuangbai County, Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province. The tiger lusheng is renowned for its uninhibited, vigorous style, displays the stubborn character of a mountain people, and expresses the Yi people’s worship of the tiger. Its principal movements imitate the various motions of the tiger, fierce and powerful, embodying the totem-worship customs of the Yi people; it is rustic and traditional. The Yi forebears believed that the tiger’s body, decomposed, had created all things; they venerated and respected the tiger and took the tiger as their ancestor, and called themselves “luoluo”, that is, the “tribe of the tiger”. Xiaomai Chong in Fazhen Town of Shuangbai County is the birthplace of the tiger lusheng; the Yi living there hold an eight-day “Tiger Festival” from the eighth to the fifteenth day of the first lunar month each year, during which “tiger worship”, “tiger welcoming”, “tiger dancing” and “tiger seeing off” are held. Those who dance the tiger wear bundles of black felt made to look like a tiger skin, and the exposed parts of the body are painted with pigment in tiger stripes, the whole person being dressed up to look like a tiger. Dancing the tiger lusheng generally requires sixteen people, costumed as eight tigers, two cats, two mountain gods and one Taoist, together with two drummers and one gong striker. The dancers line up in a single column and move in an anticlockwise direction. The dance movements of the tiger lusheng are extremely rich, including not only movements imitating the tiger’s habits such as the tiger kissing, the tiger making a bridge and the tiger rubbing its hindquarters, but also movements simulating farm work such as manuring, ploughing, tilling, sowing seed, transplanting, pulling seedlings and harvesting. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "The eight days of the Tiger Festival": From the eighth to the fifteenth of the first lunar month the village holds the Tiger Festival with rituals of welcoming, dancing and sending off the tiger. "Sixteen performers": Sixteen performers play eight tigers, two cats, two mountain gods, a Daoist and three musicians. "Tigers kissing, ploughing and reaping": Movements range from tigers kissing and bridging to spreading manure, ploughing, sowing and reaping. "Yang Jiadan of a bimo lineage": Yang Jiadan, born in Shuangbai in 1962, mastered the whole tiger-cycle ritual and leads the village team.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

National representative bearer of the Yi Tiger Sheng, a fifth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. He began taking pupils and transmitting the art in 1999. His first-generation pupils Yang Jiaxu, Xu Zhengcun and Xu Zhengyuan are already leading members of the new generation of the tiger sheng team, and his second-generation pupils Yang Guangli, Miao Zhengqing, Miao Hongjun and Li Jiahong have also become representative bearers of the Yi tiger sheng.

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. Yang Jiadian · National Representative Bearer Archive