Taige

Ⅹ-87Folk CustomsWanrong, ShanxiBatch 2 (2008)Newly Added Item

01 · Historical Records

Taige (raised pavilions) originated from deity-welcoming festival gatherings in the Central Plains region, and later spread to the southeastern coast and the northwestern region; it was highly popular for a time during the Qing dynasty, and in the course of its transmission it combined with local conditions in different places, developing distinct characteristics. Wanrong taige is a folk art form with extremely strong local character; it originated in the late Ming and early Qing period and has been transmitted in Wanrong County, Shanxi Province ever since, with a history of more than four hundred years. In the 1990s, the development of Wanrong taige reached its peak.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Taige — also called 'taijiao' (raised corners), 'taige' (raised songs), 'gaotai' (high raises), 'naoge' (挠阁), 'naoge' (脑阁, head-borne pavilions), and 'gaozhuang' (high displays) — is a folk procession performance form in traditional festival activities. In a taige performance, several children dressed as ancient-costumed opera figures are arranged into elaborate tableaux according to the plot, fixed to iron pillars and brackets on a square pavilion, which bearers carry as they walk. Traditional taige tableaux are mostly drawn from plays such as The Butterfly Lovers, The Marriage of the Heavenly Fairy (Tianxian pei), The Legend of the White Snake, Journey to the West, Zhaojun Goes Beyond the Frontier, The Blue Bridge Meeting, The Yellow Crane Tower, and The Fisherman's Revenge (Daiyu sha jia). The tableaux stand about 3 to 5 meters high, and the pavilions have three to five tiers, generally with one person per tier; some have four on the bottom tier, five or six in the middle tier, and one on the top tier. In a taige procession, four pavilions are generally used, and at most six or even eight may be used, each carried forward by four or eight bearers. Taige fuses painting, opera, colored paper craft, and paper sculpture into one, with elegant forms and spectacular scenes; it is loved by the broad masses and has long remained prevalent among the people. Wanrong taige has novel conceptions and rich content; it wins by the wondrous and moves people by the perilous. One scene from a play, one story, or one legend makes one taige, expressed in artistic form to a degree of consummate skill. Wanrong taige combines multiple crafts into one; its design is complex, its production involves many process steps, it consumes considerable financial and material resources, and it enjoys a high degree of public participation. Every year on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, crowds swarm to watch the taige performance, and Wanrong taige has thereby become an important part of the cultural life of the local masses.

One drama, one platform

Each play, tale or legend becomes a single platform, winning by strangeness and daring.

Many crafts in one frame

It fuses many crafts, demands elaborate work and heavy material input, and draws on the whole village.

The whole town watching on the fifteenth

On the fifteenth of the first month crowds press in from all sides, making the platform parade the year's great local occasion.

The Xicun troupe on tour

Inheritor Gao Yumin led the Xicun troupe to the Yuncheng Guandi fair and Beijing Longtan temple fair, winning gold awards.

The compilation of a book on Wanrong platforms

Beyond making and leading, Gao Yumin compiled a book recording the local practice.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

Wanrong taige troupes are organized by village, one troupe per village, with each household contributing money and labor to assemble the timber, colored paper, and carrying hands needed for one setup. After the reform and opening-up, the village cultural troupe took on prop production and program choreography, and taige then branched off from the purely shehuo (festival festivity) ranks into a craft line of its own; the representative inheritor Gao Yumin joined the troupe to make props after graduating from senior high school, took charge of the Spring Festival shehuo from 1985 onward, and trained more than a hundred newcomers.

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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

With the acceleration of modernization, taige activities are gradually declining, and a situation has arisen in rural areas in which the craft of making taige has no successors; related rescue and protection work is extremely urgent. Because taige brings no obvious economic benefit, young people are unwilling to participate, still less to study and transmit it; at present Wanrong taige already faces a shortage of successors and urgently needs protection. Gao Yumin (associated inheritor's official file record): Male, Han ethnicity, born in June 1963, native of Wanrong County, Shanxi Province. After graduating from senior high school at the age of eighteen, he joined the village cultural troupe, where he was responsible for prop production and program choreography, and began to research the art of taige and produce props. After 1985, he was responsible for Spring Festival shehuo performances; during this time he took the old artists Wang Dianjie and Wang Yiping as his teachers, devoting himself to studying and improving the art of taige, and successively produced many taige works of distinctive quality. His works have novel conceptions, bold designs, and exquisite craftsmanship, with programs that pushed out the old and brought in the new; he led the Xicun taige troupe to perform at the Yuncheng Guandi Temple Fair and the Beijing Longtan Temple Fair, both times winning gold awards. Every year he participates in organizing various kinds of shehuo performances and cultural displays at the city, county, and township levels, and provides guidance on taige performance to surrounding villages and towns, having trained more than a hundred taige newcomers in total. In addition, he presided over the compilation of the book Wanrong Taige. Representative inheritor of Taige (xinzi, iron branches, and floating colors) (Wanrong taige), a project of the fifth national-level batch of intangible cultural heritage.

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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