Dragon Dance

Ⅲ-4Traditional DanceQuzhou, HebeiBatch 2 (2008)Extension Item

01 · Historical Records

The Quzhou dragon lantern originated in the Song dynasty and is a traditional folk dance unique to Quzhou County, Hebei Province. According to legend, in the Song dynasty Quzhou County suffered floods in nine years out of every ten, harvests were poor, and the local farmers were plunged into extreme poverty.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Classified by the form the dragon takes, dragon dance includes cloth dragon, gauze dragon, paper dragon, straw dragon, coin dragon, bamboo dragon, palm-fibre dragon, bench dragon, hundred-leaf dragon, lotus-flower dragon, fire dragon, chicken-feather dragon, flesh dragon and many other types; because the forms differ, their dance postures and dancing techniques also differ in their own ways. The traditional performance procedure of Chinese dragon dance generally consists of such segments as 'inviting the dragon', 'sending the dragon out', 'performing the dragon dance' and 'seeing the dragon off'. Dragon dance embodies cultural meanings of pioneering effort and of the unity of humanity and nature, and is an important part of the spirit and cultural heritage of the Chinese nation. To pray that the Dragon King would grant favourable weather, timely rain and bumper harvests, people specially made a dragon with a lamp burning inside its body, gave it the name 'dragon lantern', and danced it to express their reverence for the Dragon King. Later this developed into the custom of dancing the dragon lantern at the Lantern Festival, passed down generation by generation and continued to the present day. The Quzhou dragon lantern first arose in Dongjie Village and Nanfu Village of Quzhou Town, and has now spread to ten villages, of which the dragon lantern of Dongjie Village is the most typical. The Quzhou dragon lantern is distinctive in form: its dragon head is woven from bamboo strips, and it looks mighty and heroic, with an air of dominating heaven and earth and swallowing the eight wilds. The dragon dance is performed basically at night; the lantern procession is on a grand scale, and the dancing is strange and highly varied, with more than twenty performing modes such as coiling the dragon, rolling the dragon, drilling the dragon and running the dragon. When the performance begins, the drummers beat gongs and drums, while paper-made fish, softshell turtle, shrimp, crab and freshwater mussel, the creatures of the water, lead the way in front of the dragon and open the ground. Then the ten dragon dancers spread out their formation to the beat of the drums, a big red spider leaps and darts up and down, the dragon head grips the spider and does not let go, and the sections of the dragon body follow one another in a reverse-arc movement; the scene blazes with heat and excitement. The oil wicks lit inside the dragon lantern reflect off the scales that move with the dance, producing an effect of alternating brightness and dimness. The torch bearers dance the fireworks, throwing out balls of fire trailing heavy smoke, veiling the whole performance in a mysterious, hazy colour. The Quzhou dragon lantern is a typical representative of dragon-lantern dance among the Han people, and its round-bodied dragon lantern is a unique creation.

Coiling, rolling, threading and running

Among the more than twenty performance modes of the Quzhou dragon lantern, danced mainly at night with an imposing ceremonial array.

The round-body dragon lantern

Its head is woven from bamboo splints in an imposing style, and its round body is a distinctive invention typical of Han dragon-lantern dance.

The aquatic procession

The performance opens with drummers and a paper-made shoal of fish, turtles, shrimps, crabs and mussels leading the dragon to clear the ground before the ten dancers take their stance.

Torch-bearers and smoke

A distinctive episode in which torch-bearers whirl smoke-balls, their haze joined to the oil wicks glowing through the dancing scales, veiling the whole in mystery.

The East Street village team

The dragon lantern arose in East Street and Nanfu villages and now spans ten, East Street being the most typical; the inheritor Zheng Yuhua took the head pole at seventeen and learned lantern making at twenty-one.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

Dragon dance, also called 'dragon performance', is known among the people as 'playing the dragon', 'playing the dragon lantern' or 'dragon lantern dance'; it is the most widely distributed and most far-reaching folk dance in China. This dance takes varied forms in its performance, and dragon dances among different ethnic groups and different regions differ markedly in style.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

At present, because of inadequate funding, no guarantee for production and performance, and a shortage of reserve talent, the Quzhou dragon lantern faces a serious survival crisis and urgently needs to be rescued. Zheng Yuhua (official archive record of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in February 1939, native of Quzhou County, Hebei Province. He loved folk culture from childhood, began learning dragon dance at the age of 12, took over the dragon head at 17, and began learning dragon-lantern manufacture at 21. He kept studying the manufacture of dragon lanterns and the techniques of dragon dance, and innovated on them. Every year, in the slack farming season or on holidays, he organised training in dragon-lantern manufacture and dragon-dance technique as well as performances. Since 2005 he has repeatedly led the dragon lantern performance team of Dongjie Village to take part in large events such as the Chinese Dragon Culture Festival, the Culture and Art Week and the Central Plains Folk Art Festival, and has won high praise from all sections of society. He actively organised training classes, transmitted the skills of making and performing the dragon lantern, and trained a large number of successors in dragon-lantern work. Representative inheritor of the third national-level batch of the intangible cultural heritage project Dragon Dance (Quzhou dragon lantern).

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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