Nuo Dance
01 · Historical Records
According to legend, in the Zhou dynasty there were already the terms 'great nuo' and 'villagers' nuo'; after the Han dynasty nuo gradually became an important component of the state's orthodox system of ritual law. The Baima people are descendants of the Baima clan of the ancient Chouchi Kingdom, a history of more than two thousand years.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The nuo dance is a primitive dance of a sacrificial-ritual nature in traditional society, and has a long history. The nuo dance takes driving out plague and pestilence and praying for peace and safety as its principal aim, and involves a very strong degree of mass participation. In performance the dancers wear masks, shout as they drive things away, and attract a large crowd of followers and onlookers, so the scene is very lively. Among the many ethnic minorities of the southwestern region there also survive numerous nuo rituals and nuo dances of diverse form and complex function, with strong ethnic character. Wen County of Longnan City, Gansu Province, was anciently called Yinping and lies at the southernmost end of Gansu Province. Within its territory the forests are dense and the green waters wind about; it has both the grandeur of the northern land and the beauty of the southern frontier, and the Wen County nuo dance Chige Zhou originated here. Chige Zhou is also called ghost face; because masks are worn in performance it is also called the Baima mask dance. In the Baima Tibetan language, 'Chige' means mountain god and 'Zhou' denotes dance. The Baima Tibetans have no script and do not know the Tibetan script, yet they have their own language; ethnic dance is the bodily writing with which they record that language, and it was born together with the formation of their ethnic group. The Wen County Chige Zhou is transmitted in Tielou Tibetan Township of Wen County and in places such as Shijiba and Tianchi; it integrates dance, song and music into one, carrying at once a mysterious religious atmosphere and a strong colouring of entertainment. Chige Zhou is a collective activity of the mountain strongholds with fixed performance forms; it runs through with dance from beginning to end, and its costume, props and dance postures all differ from those of other song-and-dance styles. A Chige Zhou troupe generally consists of nine people: four dressed as mountain gods, called 'Chige'; two dressed as bodhisattvas, called 'Chimu'; two dressed as husband and wife, called 'Chima'; and one child of ten-odd years dressed as the monkey lad. The four 'Chige' and the two 'Chimu' all wear masks; the two 'Chima' are dressed in ordinary costume, and the monkey lad has his face smeared with soot from the cooking pot, rather like a clown of the stage. Every year during the Spring Festival, the Chige Zhou transmitters called 'lebai' from each village organise sacrificial activities, going from east to west village by village and household by household to rid the villagers of evil, ward off calamity, and pray for blessings and auspiciousness. The activities begin on the thirteenth day of the first lunar month at Maigongshan Village of Tielou Township and proceed from village to village and household to household; large villages take two days and small villages one day, and the activities end on the eighteenth day of the first lunar month at Liziba and Diebaozhai villages. The Wen County Chige Zhou is a primitive and simple collective sacrificial dance surviving in the life of the Baima Tibetans, and for thousands of years it has carried the joys and sorrows of the Baima people.
Chige, Chimu, Chima and the monkey boy
The nine-man troupe has four mountain gods, two bodhisattvas and a couple in ordinary dress, plus a boy of about ten blackened with soot as the monkey boy.
Chige means mountain god
In the Baima Tibetan tongue chige means mountain god and zhou means dance; without a script, the people record their language in the body text of dance.
The village-by-village circuit from the thirteenth to the eighteenth
Every spring festival the ritual specialists lead the circuit east to west, one or two days per village, from Maigongshan on the thirteenth to Ziba and Diebaozhai on the eighteenth.
Representative songs of Chige Zhou
Representative pieces by Yu Yangfu, Baima Tibetan songs and chants that with dance and instruments make up the village-wide event of Chige Zhou.
Yu Linji and the collection of Baima stories
Born in 1967, Yu Linji learned all the skills from his stepfather from 1981, compiled twenty Baima stories of over thirty thousand characters, and trained more than sixty inheritors.
Tielou, Shijiba and Tianchi
The dance is found in Tielou Tibetan township and in Shijiba and Tianchi, centred on the Baima mountain villages of Tielou, preserved as an archaic communal sacrificial dance.
Ghost face and the Baima mask dance
Masked performance gives the dance its names ghost face and Baima mask dance; dance runs through it from start to finish, religious in mood yet strongly entertaining.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The nuo dance is widely transmitted throughout the country, and is distributed most densely in Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Hunan, Jiangxi and Anhui in the Yangtze River basin, and in Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu and Hebei in the Yellow River basin.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Nuo Dance · Nuo Dance · Nuo Dance · Nuo Dance · Nuo Dance · Nuo Dance · Nuo Dance · Nuo Dance · Nuo Dance · Nuo Dance · Nuo Dance.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
At present, with the enormous changes in traditional ways of life, the transmission chain of Chige Zhou has broken, and it urgently needs rescue and protection. Yu Yangfu (recorded in the official archive of associated inheritors): he is well versed in the local folk culture and diligent in study, and enjoys considerable prestige locally. In the slack farming season and on major festival days he organises the young people of his village to recount and sing the Wen County Chige Zhou, doing his utmost to teach local enthusiasts. His representative works include Ani Gasai, Lekaikai, Lamaozi and Yinyuzi. Male, Tibetan, born in October 1926, died in December 2010, a native of Wen County, Gansu Province. Representative inheritor of the third national-level intangible cultural heritage project Nuo Dance (Wen County Chige Zhou). He trained more than twenty disciples, among whom his apprentice Yu Linji is the representative inheritor of the fifth national-level intangible cultural heritage project Nuo Dance (Wen County Chige Zhou). Yu Linji (recorded in the official archive of associated inheritors): male, Tibetan, born in March 1967, a native of Wen County, Gansu Province. In 1981 he followed his stepfather Yu Yangfu to study systematically the various skills of Chige Zhou, comprehensively mastering the Baima forms of dance, song and storytelling, and becoming proficient in the Baima lebei and shaba skills, devoting himself to the transmission of Baima stories, songs, dance, language, religious belief and folklore. He organised twenty Baima stories of more than thirty thousand characters, which were selected for the Story Volume of the Study of the Folk Culture of the Baima People of Longnan. Representative inheritor of the fifth national-level intangible cultural heritage project Nuo Dance (Wen County Chige Zhou). He has taken part many times in major festival celebrations and folk performance gatherings organised by the city, the county and the township, and has received commendation. He has trained more than sixty inheritors of Chige Zhou in all, and a number of his disciples are provincial-level representative inheritors.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Luo Huiwu 02-0353
- Hu Zhenkun 02-0354
- Chengzhangqing 03-0911
- Peng Yingfang 03-0912
- Yu Yangfu 03-0913
- Fan Tinglu 03-0914
- Han Fulin 04-1557
- Wang Xuanzhi 04-1558
- Gong Maofa 04-1559
- Cheng Jinsheng 04-1560
- Wang Shunqing 05-2210
- Zhou Guoping 05-2211
- Yulinji 05-2212
- Banyongming
- Xiao Yiping
- Peng Qiusheng
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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