Lantern Festival

Ⅹ-71Folk CustomsEzhou, HubeiBatch 5 (2021)Extension Item

01 · Historical Records

The old roots of the Hundred-Section Dragon lie in the waterside settlements around Mount Song: the dragon's hundred-plus sections are joined one after another from the bridges, planks, and lamps contributed household by household; its length is not decided by the craftsman, but by the number of participating families. Once this practice of turning the whole clan's labor into a single dragon took shape, the dragon's length became the measure of the village clan's rise and decline, and the construction schedule stretched from the start of the year to year's end, so that the dragon and the number of clan members became one.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

The Mount Song Hundred-Section Dragon custom of Ezhou City, Hubei Province, is a large-scale dragon-lantern procession and sacrifice folk activity spontaneously organized by the villagers of Songshan Village during the Spring Festival; it has been transmitted for more than 390 years to this day. The dragon lantern in the fair has 101 sections and is more than 400 meters long in total, hence the name "Hundred-Section Dragon." The main area of the Mount Song Hundred-Section Dragon Lantern Fair is Yanjiawan Bay in Songshan Village, Yanji Town, with its activities extending to the surrounding townships and villages; members of the Yan clan from 17 provinces and cities, including Jiangxi, Hunan, and Jiangsu, also send representatives to observe and offer their congratulations. The making of the dragon lantern begins in the previous year and lasts more than four months; the process steps are complex and exacting, with strict formal specifications. The completed items, such as the Hundred-Section Dragon lantern, the dragon carriage, the statue of Wei Zheng, the green lion, the white elephant, the dragon banners, and the Twenty-Four Filial Exemplars lanterns, are stored in Songshan Temple. Sacrificial ceremonies such as the "lamp contest" (doudeng) are held on the twenty-fourth day of the twelfth lunar month. On New Year's Eve, the Hundred-Section Dragon performs the "displaying of the lamps" (xiandeng). From the first day of the first lunar month to the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, the Hundred-Section Dragon goes out to bestow blessings. Upon reaching its destination, the Hundred-Section Dragon rests in the "coiled lamp" (pandeng) posture, while the green lion and the white elephant go from house to house bestowing blessings. During the lantern-playing period, lantern operas are always performed, and the liveliest and indispensable part of the lantern opera is the "sending of the waist table" (songyaotai). On the morning of the eighteenth day of the first month, sacrifices and divination are held again to determine the date of the next lantern fair; the dragon lantern procession then parades around the village, and the dragon head and dragon tail are detached from the body to begin the "running wind" (paofeng), until head and tail meet again, and the dragon is sent to low-lying ground for the "transforming of the lamp" (huadeng), bringing one lantern fair to an end; the audience numbers more than 100,000.

Building the dragon lantern

One hundred and one sections totalling four hundred metres take four months to build to a strict standard.

The lamp contest

On the twenty-fourth of the twelfth month a lamp contest fixes the programme of the coming festival.

First appearance of the dragon

On New Year's Eve the dragon first appears, showing itself once within the village before the year turns.

Parading blessings and resting the lamp

The dragon tours from the first to the fifteenth, while lion and elephant visit the houses separately.

The waist platform

Every lamp play includes the waist-platform number, the busiest and most indispensable of the night.

The running finale and burning

On the eighteenth the head and tail are detached and run until they meet, then the dragon is burned.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

The Hundred-Section Dragon's procession centers on Yanjiawan Bay in Songshan Village, Yanji Town, with the surrounding villages taking turns inviting the lantern; members of the Yan clan from seventeen provinces and cities, including Jiangxi, Hunan, and Jiangsu, send people to offer their congratulations, watching not only whether the dragon's sections join together and whether the coiled-lamp posture observes proper etiquette, but also the taboos that must not be broken. With an audience of more than a hundred thousand, one village's lantern fair must each year borrow hands, benches, and gongs and drums from neighboring villages.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

In recent years, the local area has carried out intangible-cultural-heritage transmission and education activities around the cultural resources of the Mount Song Hundred-Section Dragon, organizing inheritors to teach the crafting techniques and explain the dragon-lantern sacrificial rituals, collecting relevant objects, and building a new museum, so that this folk activity has been revitalized. Among these, the Hundred-Section Dragon Lantern Fair Council and the Mount Song Hundred-Section Dragon Museum are the main undertakers of the transmission work. In the course of its development, the Mount Song Hundred-Section Dragon has formed ritual norms and clan taboos transmitted for several hundred years; it possesses certain cultural and artistic value, embodies the characteristics of popular participation, folk custom, and diversity, and has become an established folk-belief activity of the local people, playing a positive role in promoting local cultural identity and strengthening social cohesion.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

Lantern Festival (Ezhou, Hubei) · China ICH Official Project Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗

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