Dragon Dance

Ⅲ-4Traditional DanceNanxiong, GuangdongBatch 3 (2011)Extension Item

01 · Historical Records

The incense dragon of Nanxiong City, Guangdong Province, originates in the village of Baizhupian, Baishun Town, and is passed down around Baishun Town. The incense dragon originates around Baishun Town of Nanxiong in northern Guangdong and is closely bound to the local folk traditions of venerating the dragon, warding off fire and praying for a good year. Nanxiong lies at the southern foot of Dayu Ridge and was historically an important corridor through which migrants from the Central Plains moved south into Lingnan; the villages are mostly built against hills and beside streams, and rice is the principal crop. Every year the Lantern Festival is the day the locals call “making spring lively,” and also the joyous moment when the dragon “raises its head.” Around that time the incense dragon of Baizhupian village makes a grand appearance, becoming the central content of the New Year customs of the Baishun area, and it has produced a situation in which neighbouring villages compete to bring out their dragons; the skills of making and dancing the dragon are handed down from generation to generation, and today the young and middle-aged people of the village all master them skillfully, so the village is praised in the township as the “fire dragon” village.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Every year at the Lantern Festival or during other major celebrations, the incense dragon of Baizhupian village makes a grand appearance; the skills of making and dancing the dragon are handed down from generation to generation, and today the young and middle-aged people of the village all master them skillfully. For this reason the village is praised in the township as the “fire dragon” village. The incense dragon is made of rice straw, and is divided into a male dragon and a female dragon. The male dragon is 9.9 metres long and the female dragon about nine metres long. Each dragon weighs about twenty-nine kilograms. After nightfall, at the edge of the open threshing floor, eighteen dancers busily and in order light incense and insert incense sticks into the finished straw dragons at the same time, and within about fifteen minutes they must insert 1,600 to 1,800 incense sticks on each of the two dragons. When the incense has been inserted, the straw dragons are all wreathed in curling incense, like starlight twinkling. At this moment the sound of gongs and drums and of firecrackers rings out; one dancer waves the dragon pearl (fire ball) in the centre of the ground to tease the two dragons into the arena, and two lines of dancers raise the male dragon and the female dragon respectively to enter and dance, performing routines such as “two dragons playing with the pearl,” “leaping the dragon gate,” “two dragons leaving the sea” and “wandering the four seas.” In the night one sees only the two incense dragons flying up and down, vying in splendour; one sees the incense but not the people.

The male and female dragons

The two dragons of Nanxiong are both bound of straw: the male 9.9 metres long and the female about nine, each weighing some twenty-nine kilos.

The main routines

The routines of the Nanxiong incense dragon, opened by a single dancer whirling a fireball pearl to draw the two dragons into the ground.

Sixteen hundred incense sticks in fifteen minutes

The most demanding preparation: eighteen dancers light and insert some sixteen to eighteen hundred sticks into each dragon within about fifteen minutes.

Nao Chun at the Lantern Festival

The fixed season: at the Lantern Festival, locally called rousing the spring, the Baizhupian village dragon makes its grand appearance.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

Every year at the Lantern Festival is the joyous day when the dragon “raises its head,” which the locals call “making spring lively.”

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

The Nanxiong incense dragon is made of rice straw and is divided into a male dragon and a female dragon: the male dragon is 9.9 metres long, the female dragon about nine metres long, and each dragon weighs about twenty-nine kilograms. After nightfall, at the edge of the open threshing floor, eighteen dancers busily and in order light incense and insert incense sticks into the finished straw dragons at the same time, and within about fifteen minutes they must insert 1,600 to 1,800 incense sticks on each of the two dragons; when the incense has been inserted, the straw dragons are all wreathed in curling incense, like starlight twinkling. At this moment the sound of gongs and drums and of firecrackers rings out; one dancer waves the dragon pearl (fire ball) in the centre of the ground to tease the two dragons into the arena, and two lines of dancers raise the male dragon and the female dragon respectively to enter and dance, performing routines such as “two dragons playing with the pearl,” “leaping the dragon gate,” “two dragons leaving the sea” and “wandering the four seas”; in the night one sees only the two incense dragons flying up and down and vying in splendour, seeing the incense but not the people.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

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

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

Dragon Dance (Nanxiong, Guangdong) · China ICH Official Project Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗

This static English edition is rendered at the edge for search engines, AI crawlers and readers without JavaScript; it mirrors the bilingual dossier. 阅读中文版，或返回英文名录。