Taige

Ⅹ-87Folk CustomsLuhe, GuangdongBatch 2 (2008)Newly Added Item

01 · Historical Records

Taige (raised pavilion platforms) originated in god-welcoming procession and temple-fair activities in the Central Plains region. It later spread gradually to the southeastern coast and the northwest, flourished for a time during the Qing dynasty, and in the course of transmission combined with local conditions in each place, giving rise to distinct local characteristics.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Taige is also known as 'taijiao,' 'taige,' 'gaotai,' 'naoge,' 'naoge,' and 'gaozhuang,' and is a form of folk parade performance in traditional festival celebrations. In a taige performance, several children dressed as characters from classical opera form striking tableaux based on dramatic plots. These are fixed to iron posts and supports on a square pavilion frame and carried along by bearers. Traditional taige tableaux are mostly taken 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 Great Wall, The Blue Bridge Tryst, The Yellow Crane Tower, and The Fisherman's Revenge. The tableaux stand about 3 to 5 meters high; the pavilions vary from three to five tiers, generally with one performer per tier, though some have four performers on the bottom tier, five or six in the middle tier, and one on the top tier. When a taige procession moves, four pavilions are generally used, and on a large scale there may be six or even eight; each pavilion is borne along by four or eight carriers. Taige fuses painting, opera, colorful paper-and-bamboo craft, and paper modeling into a single art. Its figures are elegant and its tableaux spectacular, making it much loved by the general public and long popular in folk life without decline. Gaojing (high-scenery display) is another name for 'piaose' (floating-figure display). Hetian gaojing performances are scheduled for the nineteenth and twentieth days of the first lunar month each year, and the timing, route, and basic rituals are all fairly fixed. Hetian gaojing consists of three parts: the jingchuang (scenery bed), the jinggeng (scenery stem), and the jingwu (scenery elements). The jingchuang is a rough wooden frame 1.2 meters long, 1 meter wide, and 0.8 meters high, used to fix the jinggeng and jingwu in place; the jinggeng is a small forged steel bar six to eight meters long; the jingwu consists of the jingtong (scenery child), the jingdan, and props, with the jingtong played by boys and girls aged thirteen or fourteen or younger, the jingdan by a small child of five or six, and the props including costumes and ornaments. When a gaojing goes out in procession, apart from the jingtong and jingdan, each rig generally requires four to eight people to carry it, six to eight to guide it, another three or four to guard it, and one or two to supervise it. The whole gaojing is borne by four to six people, moving forward under the close watch of those around it. Behind the gaojing follow numerous lion troupes, musical bands, and flag bearers, together forming a huge pageant procession that sings and dances in joyful high spirits. Hetian gaojing is distinguished by the outstanding qualities of 'height, peril, and ingenuity.' 'Height' refers to the elevated position of the jingdan, generally seven to eight meters in the air. 'Peril' refers to the fact that the whole rig is supported independently by a single irregular small steel bar six to eight meters long, with the jingdan standing directly above the top of the jinggeng, appearing to have no support at all and keeping the audience on edge. 'Ingenuity' refers to the ingenious combination of the rig's organic units, which is unusual and finely wrought and never reveals the structure of the jinggeng, leaving the audience in suspense to guess.

Bed, pole and scene

It consists of a rough timber bed, a forged steel pole six to eight metres long, and the scene itself.

Older children and young ones

Adolescents play the older figures and children of five or six the small ones, with costumes and ornaments as props.

Bearers, guides, guards and monitors

Each frame takes four to eight bearers, six to eight guides, three or four guards and one or two monitors.

High, daring and ingenious

The small figures ride seven to eight metres up on a single irregular steel rod, hidden from view.

Two fixed nights

The performance falls on the nineteenth and twentieth of the first lunar month, with fixed route and rite.

Lion teams, bands and banners

Lion teams, bands and banners follow the frames to form a vast singing and dancing procession.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

Hetian gaojing is a traditional folk custom passed down in Hetian Town, Luhe County, Shanwei City, Guangdong Province. After Hakka ancestors migrated south into the mountainous areas of eastern Guangdong, they formed this folk art form with distinctly local characteristics in an environment of relatively difficult transport.

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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

As modernization accelerates, taige activities are gradually declining, and in rural areas the craft of making taige has found no successors to carry it on, making related rescue and preservation work a matter of urgency. Hetian gaojing has a long history, a wide range of subjects, and profound cultural accumulation. It plays an irreplaceable role in enlightening the people, transmitting folk culture, and many other respects, and provides invaluable first-hand material for the study of Hakka culture. Peng Niangyao (from the official archive record of the associated inheritor): He has long been engaged in the design, construction, and organized rehearsal and performance of Hetian gaojing, excelling at bringing out its artistic qualities of 'height, peril, and ingenuity,' and skillfully combining the 'revealed' and 'concealed' arts of Hetian gaojing into an organic unity. He frequently leads teams in local folk processions and folk-art performances, has rich experience, and has painstakingly passed on skills such as gaojing design and construction to later generations. Male, Han ethnicity, born in February 1929, died in April 2010, a native of Luhe County, Guangdong Province. A representative inheritor, in the third national-level batch, of the national-level intangible cultural heritage item 'Taige (Xinzi, Tiezhi, Piaose)' — Hetian Gaojing.

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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