Lantern Festival

Ⅹ-71Folk CustomsLuanping, HebeiBatch 4 (2014)Extension Item

01 · Historical Records

The origin of Lunhua is bound up with the worship of the Fire God: the founding ancestor of the Liang family migrated here from Shandong, seeking both to pray for rain and to be spared fire disasters, so he merged sacrifice and fire-play into one activity; once the flowers are scattered, the fiery energy too is dispersed along with the golden light, and the year's misfortune is thereby ended. The rule established in the Kangxi reign of the Qing dynasty has been passed down for more than three hundred years, and it is still continued village by village on nights of the first month today, the villagers catching this fire with nothing more than a flower frame and a flower cylinder.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Lunhua ('whirling flowers') is a traditional folk custom current in Dadianzi Village, Huodoushan Township, Luanping County, Hebei Province, and its surrounding area. In the Kangxi reign of the Qing dynasty, the founding ancestor of the Liang family of this village moved here from Shandong; in order to wish in advance for favorable weather and abundant harvests in the coming year, and hoping at the same time to be spared the trouble of fire, he began to worship the 'Fire God' and to learn to perform 'Lunhua'. The materials for making Lunhua look simple, but the craft requirements are quite demanding. The main materials include pot iron, charcoal, the flower barrel and the flower frame used in performance. The pot iron is made by rolling cast-iron pots on a stone mill into even small fragments; the charcoal must be made by smoldering birch or cypress wood; the flower cylinder is woven from No. 12 iron wire into a cylinder 15–20 cm in diameter and 40 cm high; the flower frame is made of two hardwood poles 15–20 cm thick, a crossbar 10 cm thick and 2.5 m long, and a carrying pole 10 cm thick and 2.5 m long, with hooks on both sides of the carrying pole and an I-shaped central axis. When loading the charcoal and pot iron into the flower cylinder there are many requirements: they must not only be separated into layers, but also evenly matched, otherwise the performance effect will be affected. Every year on the fifteenth day of the first month, a Lunhua performance is held locally. During the performance, golden flowers shoot in all directions from the center of the whole site, with streaming light and overflowing color. At times it flickers like a 'shooting star', at times darts like a 'little fish'; at the climax of the performance, a halo interwoven from beautiful rays of light is formed. Seen from a distance, it is like an enormous golden alms bowl turned upside down on the ground, radiating limitless golden light — a spectacular sight. Its technical requirements are high: one must master not only the proportion of iron fragments and charcoal when loading the flower cylinder, but also the rhythm and speed of the whirling; it has a strong folk flavor and is deeply loved by the masses.

Crushing iron and smothering charcoal

Cast iron is crushed flat and charcoal smothered from birch or cypress, without which no sparks will fly.

Making the flower tube

A wire tube of given diameter and height is packed in layers, so its charge must be evenly graded.

Building the flower frame

Hardwood posts, a crossbar and a shouldered pole with hooks carry the spinning tube.

Whirling the sparks

The performer whirls the frame so that sparks flare into a ring of light like an inverted golden bowl.

Twin tubes and a steel frame

Twin tubes on a steel frame with bearings and birch charcoal have made the display brighter.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

Lunhua is centered on Dadianzi Village in Huodoushan Township, with the Liang family as its main bearers, and people from surrounding villages and communities come to watch; at the night performances of the first month, the audience forms a circle and watches not the variety of the flowers but how many flowers come out and how long the brightness lasts. The dimensions and materials of the flower frame and flower cylinder are all fixed: the charcoal must be smoldered from birch or cypress, and the pot iron must be rolled even on the stone mill — if it is off by a fraction, no flowers come out. The rules of the craft are all in invisible places.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

As time has passed, this project has been handed down for more than three hundred years to the present. Lunhua is a crystallization of the wisdom of the villagers of Dadianzi and an expression of their creativity, handed down from generation to generation within the Liang family of the village. Excavating and protecting this project will play a positive role in studying the characteristics, artistic forms of expression and historical development of folk handicrafts in Luanping and even the Chengde area, in enlivening the cultural life of the local masses, and in promoting social harmony. Liang Zhifu (recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in July 1971, a native of Luanping County, Hebei Province. He began to learn the techniques of making and performing Lunhua in 1984; because he was intelligent, diligent and willing to study, he soon mastered its essence. In 1990 he formally became a Lunhua inheritor and began to be responsible for making and performing Lunhua. To make Lunhua more performable and watchable, with the help of older-generation artists he improved the performance equipment, changing the single flower cylinder to a double flower cylinder and the simple wooden flower frame to a steel flower frame with bearings. After many experiments, he found that birch is the best wood for making charcoal, increasing the quantity of flowers produced by Lunhua and making it more watchable. He is a representative inheritor of the Lantern Festival (Lunhua) project of national-level intangible cultural heritage, in the fifth batch. He has actively cultivated inheritors; his nephew Liang Haotian has preliminarily mastered the techniques of making Lunhua.

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)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗

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