Jinggangshanquantangshideng
01 · Historical Records
The dragon lantern, commonly called the "three-section dragon", is woven from bamboo strips and joined with colored cloth. It is performed by three people, who carry out the steps and essentials of "first saluting heaven, then the ancestors", "green dragon on the left, white tiger on the right", "five directions inverted", and "dancing to the four quarters"; it must be danced round and rolled lively. The lion dance uses a single-person hand-held lion, performed by one person. Its main sections are the lion descending the mountain, vying for the dragon gate, "great harmony", and illuminating the ancient well; its movements include snake-eating, flea-catching, the lion sleeping, scratching an itch, and baring its claws; its content includes treading on the "shao" characters, gazing at the moon, saluting the five sacred peaks, leaping over the dragon gate, treading the eight trigrams, scooping the moon, and rolling on the ground. The shield dance is performed by ten people divided into two opposing groups, with ten formation rounds: the lotus formation, the character-ren formation, the long snake formation, the single-line formation, the character-two formation, the character-wan formation, the dragon gate formation, the siege formation, withdrawing troops and returning to court, and the unification of the two states.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Jinggangshan Quantang Lion Lantern, commonly called the "full-hall lion", is a fitness and recreational performance that combines multiple folk martial arts. Huzhaoping Village in Dongshang Township, Jinggangshan City, Jiangxi Province, is the birthplace of the Quantang Lion Lantern; its main area of distribution is the villages of Huzhaoping, Dongshang, Heqiao, and Shizhou in Jinggangshan City. The Jinggangshan Quantang Lion Lantern has been passed down since the Daoguang reign of the Qing dynasty. It includes both martial arts routines and weapon contests, and its performance footwork, hand techniques, and formations are numerous and wondrous, changing endlessly, displaying the character of traditional folk recreation. It is accompanied by gongs and drums, suona horns, and other instruments, creating a lively atmosphere. The Jinggangshan Quantang Lion Lantern is performed by sixteen people and consists of seven major components: the dragon lantern, the lion dance, fist techniques, staff techniques, weapons, sparring, and the shield dance. The fist routine performance consists of ten different fist forms. The staff routine performance consists of ten different staff forms. Sparring includes fist fighting and staff sparring. The weapons include the guandao (long-handled saber), double sabers, iron rulers, iron whips, hook-sickles, rake heads, and wooden benches. The Jinggangshan Quantang Lion Lantern is simple and primal, fusing combat and dance into one, organically combining attack-and-defense grappling with fitness and entertainment, and employing a wide variety of performance footwork, hand techniques, and formation shifts. The fist techniques are open and flexible, with fierce chopping and hard hanging, tumbling and falling, and unpredictable changes; the staff techniques block to the left and push to the right, chop from above and thrust from below, spinning left and right; the weapons can hack, thrust, and cut with the force of a fierce tiger, full of interest; the dragon lantern rolls round and dances lively, head and tail responding to each other in unison; the lion dance circles, pounces, leaps, and rolls, expressing the ferocity of the lion; the shield dance advances swiftly and bravely with overwhelming momentum, vigorous power, and nimble footwork, achieving speed of "heart, eye, and hand", with applause like wind and strikes like lightning. In normal times it serves as a martial arts and fitness exercise; at every Spring Festival, villagers spontaneously organize Quantang Lion Lantern performances to celebrate the New Year and the Lantern Festival.
The three-section dragon lantern
The three-section dragon of the full-hall troupe, bamboo-framed and cloth-joined, danced by three men with its six named patterns.
The single-hand lion
The one-man lion of the troupe, with its episodes of descending the mountain, seizing the dragon gate and inspecting the old well.
The ten formations of the shield dance
Ten ten-man shield formations from lotus and herringbone to the besieging ring, demanded to be fast in eye, hand and heart.
Guan sabre, twin blades, iron rule, whip, sickle, harrow and bench
The weapons of the troupe, heavy and varied, alongside ten fist and ten staff routines and their paired sparring.
The fist manual and lion-lantern secrets
Documents gathered by the inheritor Lin Wenhui together with the troupe's props and weapons, the basis of its teaching.
Huzhuaping village
The village where the art has been kept since the Daoguang era, its teams drilling in ordinary times and performing at New Year.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Quantang Lion Lantern originated in Huzhaoping Village, Dongshang Township, Jinggangshan City, Jiangxi Province, and is mainly distributed in the villages of Huzhaoping, Dongshang, Heqiao, and Shizhou, having been passed down from generation to generation by local martial arts families.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The Jinggangshan Quantang Lion Lantern is transmitted mainly through master-disciple instruction and family inheritance; in addition, collective transmission is carried out spontaneously within the local community. It is both a folk sports activity and a popular recreational performance: based on martial arts, with entertainment and physical fitness as its aims, it both enlivens rural cultural life and cultivates sentiment, carrying considerable socio-cultural value and playing a positive role in strengthening community identity and cohesion. Lin Wenhui (according to the official records of the associated inheritor): male, Han ethnicity, born in October 1961, from Jinggangshan City, Jiangxi Province. A Quantang Lion Lantern boxing master. Born into a martial arts family, he began learning the basic skills of the Quantang Lion Lantern at age five, studied routines and performance techniques with his grandfather Lin Baosheng at age seven, and joined the Quantang Lion Lantern performance troupe at fourteen. In 1983 he studied the art and taught disciples alongside his father Lin Sihe; with a solid martial arts foundation and comprehensive skills, he also mastered the complete set of performance props and martial weapons of the Quantang Lion Lantern, and collected such physical objects and cultural relics as the Boxing Manual and the Secrets of the Lion Lantern. In 2012 he became the leader of a new generation of Quantang Lion Lantern practitioners, organizing performances every Lantern Festival. In August 2015 he founded the Jinggangshan Quantang Lion Lantern Council and serves as its chairman. He is a representative inheritor of the Jinggangshan Quantang Lion Lantern, an intangible cultural heritage project of the fifth national-level batch. In recent years he has actively carried out activities bringing the Quantang Lion Lantern into schools, and has taught more than three hundred students and disciples.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Lin Wenhui 05-2569
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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