Guowa
01 · Historical Records
In Tibetan, “guo” means a weapon and “wa” means the dancer, so guowa means a dancer armed with weapons. It is performed by folk artists and accompanied by a temple religious music ensemble, an artistic combination of folk dance and temple culture.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Yushu warrior dance is a folk dance transmitted in Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province; in Tibetan it is called “guowa”. In Tibetan, “guo” means a weapon and “wa” means the dancer, so the term means a dancer armed with weapons. Most Tibetan folk dances fall into two kinds: folk dances that ordinary people perform for their own amusement in daily life, and “qiangmu” performed by monks in monasteries. Guowa is different. It is a rather special folk dance performed by folk artists and accompanied by a temple religious music ensemble, an artistic combination of folk dance and temple culture. Guowa is found mainly in Jiegu Town, the seat of the Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture government in Qinghai Province. The adjoining Chengduo County also has a performance tradition, so this is a community-level transmission confined to one locality. Guowa is performed every spring at the “Jiegu Zheji” temple fair held at Jiegu Monastery. It is regarded as a solemn, mysterious dance with deep cultural content, and as an epitome of the history, culture and religion of Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai Province. Performing guowa means sharing joy between deity and human; it conveys dignity, praise and fulfilment, and is an expression of the human spirit. Guowa is a large-scale collective square dance. The number of performers is unrestricted, generally forty or more; all performers are adult men, who must be devout local residents, and it is forbidden to teach it to outsiders. Performers must choose an auspicious day, hour and star configuration. Dancers wear tall red tasselled hats; the lead dancer holds a sword in one hand and a round lion-headed shield in the other, with jewels and jade hanging round the neck, brocade ribbons on the body and a treasured saber at the waist, looking ornate, dignified and elegant. From entrance to exit the choreography is rigorously arranged, combining religious ritual with the content of ancient military drill. It depicts the return in triumph of tribal warriors who have fought evil; its formations are based mainly on the circle, and most movements imitate those of an ancient battlefield, such as swordplay, archery, and thrusting and stabbing. Guowa stresses force and momentum: it is steady and weighty, bold and expansive, with a strong martial air and a spirit of unyielding courage; the dancing is slow and solemn, the scenes grand and magnificent. The instruments include the large drum, jialing (the Tibetan suona), gangling, the large nao, the large cymbals and the ritual trumpet. Guowa is a ritual and ceremonial song-and-dance with a strong local and ethnic character. It is a vivid witness to the exchange and fusion of multiple cultures in early Tibetan history, a precious spiritual and cultural treasure with high artistic, aesthetic, historical, social and cultural value. It plays an important role in promoting the sustainable economic, social and environmental development of Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture and in carrying forward traditional national culture.
Tall red-tasselled hat, sword and lion shield
The dancers wear tall red-tasselled hats; the leader carries sword and round lion-headed shield with jewels and silk sashes about him.
Sword, bow and thrust of the old battlefield
The circular formations imitate the fencing, archery and thrusting of the ancient battlefield, depicting victorious tribal warriors.
The Jiegu Zheji temple fair
Performed at the spring temple fair of Jiegu monastery, the dance requires the choice of an auspicious day, hour and constellation.
The monastic ensemble
The monastery band plays great drum, Tibetan shawm, long trumpet, large cymbals and horns to the slow, solemn dancing.
Dawa Tsering and his thousand pupils
The fifth-batch national inheritor Dawa Tsering, born in 1958 into a performing household, has taught more than a thousand pupils.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Guowa is found mainly in Jiegu Town, where the prefectural seat of Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture stands, and in the neighbouring Chengduo County, which also has a performance tradition; it belongs to a community-level transmission confined to one locality.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Dawa Cairen (as recorded in the official files of the associated inheritor): Male, Tibetan, born in June 1958, a native of Yushu City, Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province. He comes from a family of guowa warrior-dance performers. Influenced by his family, he took to dancing as a child and was personally taught the guowa performing skills by his grandfather and father. He became a guowa performer at 18 and began taking apprentices at 26; he has more than a thousand disciples to date. Both his performing and his teaching have won unanimous praise from the local people, and he has many times led the dance at the annual Yushu Prefecture horse-racing festival, at major ritual occasions in temple fairs and villages, and during festival periods. He has long been dedicated to the performance of guowa, to collecting and sorting out its material, and to the training of inheritors, and has achieved remarkable results. Representative inheritor of guowa (Yushu warrior dance), a national-level intangible cultural heritage item in the fifth national-level batch.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Dawacairen 05-2302
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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