Banyongming

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Banyongming, Male, Tibetan, from Wen, Gansu, is a sixth-batch national representative bearer of Nuo Dance (Ⅲ-7). The tradition is documented in Wen, Gansu. Within the regional tradition and school record of Nuo Dance in Wen, Gansu: The nuo dance is widely transmitted throughout the country, and is distributed most densely in Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Hunan, Jiangxi and Anhui in the Yangtze River basin, and in Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu and Hebei in the Yellow River basin. According to legend, in the Zhou dynasty there were already the terms 'great nuo' and 'villagers' nuo'; after the Han dynasty nuo gradually became an important component of the state's orthodox system of ritual law. The Baima people are descendants of the Baima clan of the ancient Chouchi Kingdom, a history of more than two thousand years.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

The bearer record for Banyongming is anchored in the documented technical standards of Nuo Dance in Wen, Gansu. Within the documented technical tradition of Nuo Dance in Wen, Gansu: The nuo dance is a primitive dance of a sacrificial-ritual nature in traditional society, and has a long history. The nuo dance takes driving out plague and pestilence and praying for peace and safety as its principal aim, and involves a very strong degree of mass participation. In performance the dancers wear masks, shout as they drive things away, and attract a large crowd of followers and onlookers, so the scene is very lively. Among the many ethnic minorities of the southwestern region there also survive numerous nuo rituals and nuo dances of diverse form and complex function, with strong ethnic character. Wen County of Longnan City, Gansu Province, was anciently called Yinping and lies at the southernmost end of Gansu Province. Within its territory the forests are dense and the green waters wind about; it has both the grandeur of the northern land and the beauty of the southern frontier, and the Wen County nuo dance Chige Zhou originated here. Chige Zhou is also called ghost face; because masks are worn in performance it is also called the Baima mask dance. In the Baima Tibetan language, 'Chige' means mountain god and 'Zhou' denotes dance. The Baima Tibetans have no script and do not know the Tibetan script, yet they have their own language; ethnic dance is the bodily writing with which they record that language, and it was born together with the formation of their ethnic group. The Wen County Chige Zhou is transmitted in Tielou Tibetan Township of Wen County and in places such as Shijiba and Tianchi; it integrates dance, song and music into one, carrying at once a mysterious religious atmosphere and a strong colouring of entertainment. Chige Zhou is a collective activity of the mountain strongholds with fixed performance forms; it runs through with dance from beginning to end, and its costume, props and dance postures all differ from those of other song-and-dance styles. A Chige Zhou troupe generally consists of nine people: four dressed as mountain gods, called 'Chige'; two dressed as bodhisattvas, called 'Chimu'; two dressed as husband and wife, called 'Chima'; and one child of ten-odd years dressed as the monkey lad. The four 'Chige' and the two 'Chimu' all wear masks; the two 'Chima' are dressed in ordinary costume, and the monkey lad has his face smeared with soot from the cooking pot, rather like a clown of the stage. Every year during the Spring Festival, the Chige Zhou transmitters called 'lebai' from each village organise sacrificial activities, going from east to west village by village and household by household to rid the villagers of evil, ward off calamity, and pray for blessings and auspiciousness. The activities begin on the thirteenth day of the first lunar month at Maigongshan Village of Tielou Township and proceed from village to village and household to household; large villages take two days and small villages one day, and the activities end on the eighteenth day of the first lunar month at Liziba and Diebaozhai villages. The Wen County Chige Zhou is a primitive and simple collective sacrificial dance surviving in the life of the Baima Tibetans, and for thousands of years it has carried the joys and sorrows of the Baima people. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Chige, Chimu, Chima and the monkey boy": The nine-man troupe has four mountain gods, two bodhisattvas and a couple in ordinary dress, plus a boy of about ten blackened with soot as the monkey boy. "Chige means mountain god": In the Baima Tibetan tongue chige means mountain god and zhou means dance; without a script, the people record their language in the body text of dance. "The village-by-village circuit from the thirteenth to the eighteenth": Every spring festival the ritual specialists lead the circuit east to west, one or two days per village, from Maigongshan on the thirteenth to Ziba and Diebaozhai on the eighteenth. "Representative songs of Chige Zhou": Representative pieces by Yu Yangfu, Baima Tibetan songs and chants that with dance and instruments make up the village-wide event of Chige Zhou.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

In 2025, Banyongming was announced in the sixth batch of national representative bearers for Nuo Dance, with Wen, Gansu as the declared area. Within the documented safeguarding record of Nuo Dance in Wen, Gansu: The project was inscribed in the national inventory in 2008 (batch 2), with Wen, Gansu as its declared area, and Wen County Intangible Cultural Heritage Safeguarding Center as its safeguarding unit. Since the project was inscribed in the national inventory, its declared area and safeguarding unit have carried out documentation, transmission and presentation within the national safeguarding framework. Together, the inventory record and the project archive form the public documentary basis for the bearer’s transmission practice.

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. Banyongming (Wen, Gansu) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. Banyongming · China ICH Official Archive