Mid-Autumn Festival
01 · Historical Records
The origins of the fire dragon dance are preserved mainly through oral accounts among the local community: during the Guangxu reign of the Qing dynasty, an epidemic was prevalent in the Tai Hang area, and following the old custom the villagers made a fire dragon and paraded it through all the streets and lanes, using the sound of firecrackers and the force of fire to drive away evil and cure disease; thereafter it was performed every year at mid-autumn without change, and it gradually solidified into a Mid-Autumn ritual shared by the whole village. The name 'Tai Hang' ('Big Pit') accords with the terrain the word 'hang' (pit) denotes — a settlement built against the hills on the north side of Hong Kong Island; what the fire dragon paraded was precisely the narrow lanes within the old basin. The making of the fire dragon is a matter of folk craft: a frame of bamboo strips, covered on the outside with paper, and fitted with sulfur fireworks; the framing, papering and loading of fireworks are shared out among the neighbours of the same village, and the work must be completed before the fourteenth so that the dragon can be consecrated at Lin Fa Kung (the Lotus Palace) that evening. The organisation of the activity was long shouldered by the Tai Hang Kaifong (neighbourhood) Welfare Association alone: reporting for approval, booking venues, notifying the neighbourhood and arranging the order of the parade were all decided within the association.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Tai Hang fire dragon dance is a folk activity held every year at the Mid-Autumn Festival by the coastal Hakka village on the north side of Hong Kong Island, in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, to drive away pestilence and pray for blessings. Legend has it that in the sixth year of the Guangxu reign (1880), a plague broke out in Tai Hang; the villagers made a fire dragon and paraded it through the community, setting off firecrackers to drive away the plague, and from this the fire dragon dance custom arose. The activity is held on three consecutive evenings around the Mid-Autumn Festival. Every year the residents of Tai Hang make a new fire dragon, and on the evening of the fourteenth day of the eighth lunar month a consecration ceremony is held for the dragon inside Lin Fa Kung (the Lotus Palace), the temple where Guanyin is enshrined. Thereafter, on three consecutive evenings, it parades in a clockwise direction through all the streets of Tai Hang. On the evening of the sixteenth, the 'Yau Tai Wun' (parade of great fortune) ceremony is held: the fire dragon circles the community in a counterclockwise direction, is then danced to the seaside and cast into the sea, an act called 'the dragon returning to heaven' (lung kui tin). Over the decades Tai Hang has become part of a bustling urban district, and the fire dragon dance has become a Mid-Autumn ritual shared by the residents of the Tai Hang community; under the auspices of the Tai Hang Kaifong Welfare Association this heritage continues to be passed on. The Tai Hang fire dragon dance plays an important role in carrying forward the fine traditions of the Chinese nation and in strengthening community identity and cohesion.
Blessing of the fire dragon at the Lotus Palace
On the fourteenth night the newly built dragon is brought into the Lotus Palace for incense and candle rites before it is allowed out to dance.
Three nights of clockwise street parade
For three consecutive nights the dragon circles the whole village clockwise, drumbeats guiding its coils in the narrow streets.
The grand luck tour and the dragon's return
On the sixteenth night the dragon runs counter-clockwise around the community and is finally carried to the sea and cast into the water.
Building the fire dragon
Craft work in bamboo frame, paper skin and fireworks, completed before the fourteenth, with each task taken by different households.
Dragon-over-the-bridge and dragon-cake figures
Later additions to the repertoire, such as coiling over a bridge, winding round twin posts, and forming a cake figure for the crowd to take pieces from.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Tai Hang fire dragon dance takes Tai Hang itself as its sole core area: the dragon's circuit through all the streets there is a public parade within the single village, with no need to cross districts. Other Hakka village communities on the north side of Hong Kong Island, such as Sha Tin and Lei Yue Mun, also organise their own fire dragon parades every mid-autumn; they mostly borrow their flourishes and rules from Tai Hang, yet each goes its own way, with no unified choreography. The organisational form is that of a 'kaifong' (neighbourhood association) rather than a 'she' (community altar): the Tai Hang Kaifong Welfare Association manages not only the fire dragon dance but also the other public welfare affairs of the village, and it is a survival of the old-style kaifong organisations of Hong Kong Island. The dancers are mainly young and middle-aged men, with the drummer, the leader of the dragon's head, the incense bearers and the firecracker bearers each assigned their part; parents mostly encourage their sons to sign up, and children learn the dance formations under the lantern light from an early age. The order of deity worship and parade is fixed and clearly distinct: on the night of the fourteenth the dragon is consecrated at Lin Fa Kung; on the following three nights it parades clockwise through all the streets of the village; on the night of the sixteenth 'Yau Tai Wun' reverses to a counterclockwise circuit; and at the end it is danced to the seaside and cast into the sea. This arrangement of clockwise followed by counterclockwise is the most obvious marker distinguishing the fire dragon rites of Tai Hang from those of other places.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Mid-Autumn Festival · Mid-Autumn Festival · Mid-Autumn Festival · Mid-Autumn Festival · Mid-Autumn Festival · Mid-Autumn Festival · Mid-Autumn Festival.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Chan Tak-fai (as recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): male, of the Han ethnicity, born in December 1946, a native of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. He has taken part in fire dragon dance activities since the age of six, and from the late 1970s has served as general director of the fire dragon dance activities. He is enthusiastic in fire dragon affairs, and has mastered the methods of making the fire dragon, the flourishes of the fire dragon dance, and the content and procedures of the rituals. Building on the inherited tradition, he has designed and improved the formations of the fire dragon dance, including the dragon crossing a bridge, the dragon circling twin pillars, striking the dragon cake and grand reunion, making the performance content of the fire dragon dance fuller. He is a representative inheritor of the fourth-batch national-level intangible cultural heritage item Mid-Autumn Festival (Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance). He is a fourth-generation inheritor of the Tai Hang fire dragon dance.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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