Stilt Walking
01 · Historical Records
Dungan stilt walking originated in Dawa Village of Yangliu Town, Xintai City. Dungan stilt walking is a form of folk dance performance that is highly distinctive in the Shandong region; it arose about the twenty-third year of the Guangxu reign of the Qing dynasty (1897), and to this day it has a history of more than a hundred years.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Stilt walking is also called “stilt yangge”. It is a folk dance with a long history, widely transmitted throughout the country, and is named for the fact that the performers mostly tread on wooden stilts with both feet. Stilt walking is generally performed in the form of a troupe, with participants numbering from a dozen or so to several dozen. They mostly portray figures from ancient myths or historical stories, their costumes mostly imitate the role costumes of Chinese opera, and the props commonly used in performance include fans, handkerchiefs, wooden sticks, sabres and spears and the like. Stilt walking has two performance forms, “stilt parade” and “field performance”; the latter is in turn divided into the “large field” and the “small field”. The “large field” is performed collectively by the troupe, dancing while moving through various formations and patterns; the “small field” is performed by two or three people, mostly a man-and-woman duet, sometimes dancing while singing. The wooden stilts used in different places range from 30 centimetres to 300 centimetres; according to performance style they can be divided into “civil stilts” and “martial stilts”, the civil stilts stressing twisting, treading and plot-driven performance, while the martial stilts stress displays of virtuosity. Xintai City of Shandong Province lies in the heart of central Shandong, in the southeastern part of Tai'an City, bordering Laiwu to the north, adjoining Yiyuan to the east, joining Pingyi to the south and meeting Ningyang to the west. There are numerous stilt troupes here and masters are gathered in great numbers; some performers of outstanding skill invented the stunt of jumping down steps on a single stilt, and the second-generation inheritor Wang Jialuo developed this to its extreme, forming the basic pattern of “Dungan stilt walking”: a round log is used as the prop with a treadboard set in the middle, accompanied by gongs and drums, and in performance the performer treads on the board with both feet while the single pole bounces and travels along the ground. The third-generation inheritor Wang Zhaojie further merged folk opera into the performance of Dungan stilt walking and created the classic play “Liu Hai Plays with the Golden Toad”, dearly loved by the people. Dungan stilt walking has a certain scale and a set of routines from props, instruments and styling to stunt performance, forming a complete performance system; it is the oldest and most distinctive wonder of the folk art of Shandong Province. Its styling is strange and its images vivid and lifelike, its movements lively and humorous, and it has become a unique stunt among the folk dances of Shandong and of the whole country.
Liu Hai Plays with the Golden Toad
The third-generation inheritor Wang Zhaojie further merged folk opera into the performance of Dungan stilt walking and created the classic play “Liu Hai Plays with the Golden Toad”, dearly loved by the people.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
At that time the Xintai and Yangliu area had a developed economy, and folk acrobatics were extremely popular.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Stilt Walking · Stilt Walking · Stilt Walking · Stilt Walking · Stilt Walking · Stilt Walking · Stilt Walking.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
As the times have changed, the conditions for the survival of Dungan stilt walking have deteriorated day by day, there is a dearth of successors, it is on the verge of being lost, and urgent rescue and protection are needed. Wang Zonglu (official archival record of the associated inheritor): Male, of Han ethnicity, born in August 1934, a native of Xintai City, Shandong Province. Through his research and excavation, the already lost skill of single-leg stilt jumping regained its splendour. In the classic Dungan stilt play “Liu Hai Plays with the Golden Toad”, he can portray Liu Hai and perform high-difficulty movements such as double-treading, single-treading, cross-treading, left-single-treading, right-single-treading and bounding treads, and every performance wins warm applause from the audience. Materials on the performance were recorded in turn in such books as “Anthology of Chinese Folk and Ethnic Dances, Shandong Volume” and “A General Survey of Qilu Folk Art”. Representative inheritor of stilt walking (Dungan stilt walking), a national-level intangible cultural heritage project in the fifth batch. He devoted a great deal of heart and effort to the performance, excavation and transmission of Dungan stilt walking, and took part in the provincial performance review in Shandong three times, winning awards.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Xing Chuanpei 02-0357
- Yang Min 03-0915
- Wang Xinhui 03-0916
- Duan Tiecheng 04-1561
- Zhang Zhongxian 05-2214
- Wang Zonglu 05-2215
- Wei Pingjun 05-2216
- Juhaiquan 05-2217
- Wang Jixian
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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。