Tian Renxin

01 · Lineage & Regional School

From the age of six, Tian Renxin learned to dance the hand-waving dance under his grandfather Tian Fugui and his father Tian Wanfa. Among the disciples he has taught are Tian Chaofa and Tian Mingkong. Within the regional tradition and school record of Tujia Hand-waving Dance in Xiangxitujiazumiaozuzizhi, Hunan: The Tujia hand-waving dance of western Hunan takes the Tujia villages around Longshan County, Baojing County and Yongshun County as its core transmission area, and the greatest number of surviving hand-waving halls are preserved in the Xiche River basin and the Nongche area of Longshan County. The large hand-waving dance is jointly organized by several villages, sacrifices to the god Bada, and can involve several thousand people; the small hand-waving dance takes one surname and one village as its unit, sacrifices to the ancestors of that surname, is performed on the village flat, and is usually led in the dance by an elder of the clan. The hand-waving dance arose in the ancient ancestor-worship rituals of the Tujia people. Judging from the surviving stele of the Baba Dawang Temple and the county gazetteer of the Qing dynasty, the hand-waving dance already has a history of close to a thousand years. The Tujia hand-waving dance of western Hunan integrates song, dance, music and drama, and expresses a broad and rich range of historical and social life: the creation of heaven and earth, the propagation of humankind, national migration, hunting and fishing, sericulture and weaving, slash-and-burn cultivation, warfare in antiquity, mythological legend, food and daily life.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Tian Renxin, a male of Tujia ethnicity, was born in 1933 in Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Hunan. The hand-waving dance he performs has plain movements and a rich archaic flavor. Within the documented technical tradition of Tujia Hand-waving Dance in Xiangxitujiazumiaozuzizhi, Hunan: The Tujia hand-waving dance of western Hunan is the folk dance that carries the most distinctively Tujia character and reflects the oldest Tujia customs most directly. It is now transmitted mainly in Longshan, Baojing, Yongshun and other places in the Tujia areas of western Hunan. It is generally performed at night from the third day to the fifteenth day of the first month of the lunar calendar. Its dance content is structured according to the ritual procedure described above. The Tujia hand-waving dance has a bold, unadorned carriage, with movements such as single waving, double waving, circling wave, and waving while jumping. The dancing ground is generally a flat open space. The dance is divided into the large hand-waving dance and the small hand-waving dance: the large one sacrifices to the founding ancestor of the clan on a grand scale, with more than a thousand dancers and tens of thousands of spectators; the small one mainly sacrifices to the ancestors of one surname and is on a much smaller scale. Its music comprises vocal accompaniment and instrumental accompaniment. The vocal part mainly includes the qichang song (opening melody) and the baishou song, the instruments are mainly the drum and the gong, and a single piece often changes according to the content and movements of the dance. The movement characteristics of the hand-waving dance are following the beat in the same direction, bending the knees, trembling and sinking, expressing a vigorous and powerful, free and unrestrained style. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Great hand-waving and small hand-waving": Great hand-waving honours the clan's common ancestor with over a thousand dancers; small hand-waving honours a single surname's ancestor. "Single, double, whirling and stepping swings": The basic postures of the dance: single, double and whirling swings of the arms while dancing on the village threshing ground. "Same-side step, bent knee, tremble and sink": The movement keys of the dance — same-side arm and leg, bent knees, tremor and sinking weight — produce its bold style. "The broken stele of the Eight Bishops' Temple": A broken Qing stele from the Eight Bishops' Temple and local gazetteers suggest the dance is nearly a thousand years old.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

He is a national representative bearer of Tujia Hand-waving Dance, a second-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 Renxin · National Representative Bearer Archive