Lion Dance

Ⅲ-5Traditional DanceFengcheng, JiangxiBatch 2 (2008)Extension Item

01 · Historical Records

The Yue family lion is a form of folk art created by the local people of Fengcheng, Jiangxi, to commemorate the national hero Yue Fei. It originated in the Song dynasty and took shape in the Ming dynasty, and to this day has a history of more than four hundred years. It is said that during the Jiajing era of the Ming dynasty, Luo Hongxian, a famous martial arts master and descendant of former soldiers of the Yue family army, inherited the supreme skill of the Yue family fist.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Lion dance, also called “shizi wu” (lion dance), “shi deng” (lion lantern), “wu shi” or “wu shizi”, is an important component of the traditional Chinese hundred-performances and acrobatics repertoire. Lion dance has a long history. It is widely popular in the Han areas of China and appears frequently in festival celebrations such as the Spring Festival, using lively and cheerful performance to express the Chinese people's good wishes for auspiciousness and the warding off of disaster. It is generally divided into two major types, the southern lion and the northern lion. The southern lion is agile and fierce and often performs high-difficulty techniques; the northern lion is playful and naive and usually performs teasing and frolicking movements. After Yue Fei was killed, waves of enthusiasm for practising the Yue family fist swept through the folk world and never subsided. The famous general Deng Zilong studied under Luo Hongxian as a child and received true transmission of the Yue family fist, especially the supreme skill of the “Yue Fei long spear”. Frustrated in his official career and demoted back to his native Fengcheng, Deng Zilong blended the Fengcheng “school fist” (xuemen quan) with the “Yue family hand” (yuejiashou, hard-style fist), and independently created the Yue family lion, which fully displays the mighty and perilous character of the Yue family fist; it circulated widely in Xinjian, Anyi, Chongren, Zhangshu and other places. Lion dance began with the Yue family's water and fire meteors. First the Yue family spear, the Yue family hammer and the Yue family fist are performed, and then in turn the rear blade, the staff and the bench. Each performer plays to their own strength, giving full rein. The lion is led out by the meteors and dances gracefully against the backdrop of such meteor movements as “snowflake covering the top”, “meteor chasing the moon”, “passing over the back” and “linked hands”, performing movements such as “drawing in the neck”, “stretching lazily”, “combing the whiskers” and “licking the dust”. The Yue family lion draws on the strengths of a hundred schools and combines literary and martial qualities. Its style is characterized by “might”, “heroism” and “peril”. It emphasizes hard training and unified action, and is most opposed to fancy empty boxing, placing its weight on the “three yin” and the “three yang”. Yin means stillness, yang means agitation; stillness that does not cease, agitation that is not disordered — it has the bearing of a general.

Opening with the water and fire meteors

The performance opens with the Yue family's water and fire meteors, then spear, hammer and boxing, followed by blades, staves and benches, before the lion is drawn out by the meteors.

Yue family spear, hammer and fist

The martial core of the Yue lion, derived from the Yue family boxing system; the Ming general Deng Zilong learned the Yue spear from Luo Hongxian.

Meteor techniques

The meteor techniques accompanying the lion as it stretches its neck, yawns, combs its whiskers and licks the dust.

The lion's daily actions

The lion's everyday actions, joined to the power release of hard-gate boxing to produce a style both firm and yielding, breathing freely.

Three yin, three yang and the martial manner

Its manner is awe-inspiring, heroic and perilous, stressing hard skill and unity of action, and holding to the three yin and three yang: stillness that is not inert, ardour that is not disorder.

Luo Hongxian and Deng Zilong

The key figures: created in memory of Yue Fei, the form was founded by Deng Zilong, who fused Fengcheng school boxing with the Yue hard-gate fist and spread it through the region.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

The forms of lion dance differ from place to place across China, and their regional characteristics are very distinct.

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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

The Fengcheng Yue family lion fuses martial arts and dance into one and melts intention, thought, form and posture into a single whole; it shows calligraphy through boxing and expresses narrative through dance art, containing deep cultural connotation and refined artistic taste, demonstrating the tenacious spiritual will of the Chinese nation, and holding high artistic, historical and cultural research value. At present, the performance troupes are shrinking, personnel are ageing, inheritors are scarce, and the skills are gradually deteriorating; it urgently needs to be rescued. Liu Guoping (official archival record of the associated inheritor): His skills combine hardness and softness, his breath is free, and his releasing and gathering is powerful; the Yue family lion gate fist that he performs displays the characteristics of hard-style fist in a particularly marked way. In December 1972 he took the lead in forming the Yushao Yue family lion team and developed twelve team members. Afterwards he taught Yue family martial arts to young people in the village, with seventy-six people taking part in the instruction, of whom nearly twenty reached a high level of attainment and more than fifty became proficient in Yue family boxing. In 2012 the project was engaged to settle in the national AAAA-class scenic area of Mingyue Mountain, and at the same time the Fengcheng Yue family lion transmission and training base was founded. In 2014 he formed a youth Yue family lion team and systematically and in a planned way carried out intangible cultural heritage transmission activities in schools. Male, Han ethnicity, born in July 1960, died in April 2019, native of Fengcheng City, Jiangxi Province. Representative inheritor of the fifth batch national-level intangible cultural heritage project Lion Dance (Fengcheng Yue Family Lion).

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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