Lanzhou Taipinggu

01 · Historical Records

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the survival of the Lanzhou Taiping drum has faced an unprecedented crisis: the number of participants has fallen sharply, and young village "good hands" are no longer as numerous as before.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

The Lanzhou Taiping drum dance has a history of more than six hundred years, is known as the "number one drum under heaven", and is transmitted in Lanzhou, Yongdeng, Jiuquan, Zhangye, Jingyuan and other places. The Lanzhou Taiping drum is cylindrical in shape, with a body 70 to 75 centimetres high and a head diameter of 45 to 50 centimetres, weighing 19 to 22 kilograms; cowhide is stretched over both faces and decorated with designs such as the two dragons playing with a pearl, and the drum straps are long enough to be slung over the shoulder, which makes it convenient to strike and at the same time allows the drum to be tossed in any direction. The Lanzhou Taiping drum dance is a group dance with many forms of performance, such as "the grand sedan welcomes the guests", "sons and daughters of the Yellow River" and "contest on the platform". A drum team numbers 24 to 48 people, and in some cases as many as 108. Under the leader's command the drummers beat the gongs in accompaniment and the formation changes constantly: at one moment "two armies facing each other", "the golden dragon entwining its tail", "a double breakout", at another "the chariot wheels whirl into battle", "jumping beat", "squatting beat", "turning beat", "bank beat" and so on. Through the choreography, revision and refinement of several generations of folk artists and art workers, the Lanzhou Taiping drum gradually formed three basic beating methods — the "low drum", the "middle drum" and the "high drum". On this basis the techniques of dramatic stance work and martial arts were blended in, the changes of rhythm were strengthened, and the single Taiping drum beating rhythm gave rise to light, heavy, slow and urgent variants, while the changes of formation also became smoother. The choreography of new techniques for drum, gong and cymbals has made the Lanzhou Taiping drum more musical, more pictorial, more dance-like and more characterful, achieving reasonable development on the basis of inheritance.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

The Lanzhou Taiping drum has as its core area of transmission the urban districts of Lanzhou City together with Gaolan, Yongdeng and Yuzhong, and is also distributed around Jiuquan, Zhangye and Jingyuan; among these, the drum teams and the drum-making of Gaolan County are the most concentrated. Local drum teams are mostly organized by village or community; when they go out for the Spring Festival shehuo, the Taiping drum team leads at the head of the procession, opening the way with the drum and inspiring awe with its array. Drum teams range in size from twenty-four to one hundred and eight people, all rising and falling together strictly on the leader's command.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

Excavating and protecting the Lanzhou Taiping drum dance of Gansu is not only of positive significance for inheriting and enriching Chinese drum culture, but also helps to advance academic research into ancient Chinese dance and music. Measures need to be taken to strengthen the excavation, protection, organization and improvement of the Lanzhou Taiping drum. Miao Zhengfa (official archival record of the associated representative inheritor): Male, Han nationality, born in 1955, native of Lanzhou, Gansu. Representative inheritor of the Lanzhou Taiping drum, a national-level intangible cultural heritage project in the second national-level batch. Wei Yonghong (official archival record of the associated representative inheritor): Male, Han nationality, born in May 1952, native of Gaolan County, Gansu Province. He has persisted in innovating and improving the techniques of Taiping drum manufacture and the level of performance, successively reducing the weight of the drum by 20 jin and creating the beating methods and formations of "the eagle strikes the long sky", "the peal of thunder", "two armies facing each other", "the three yangs ushering in fortune" and "ten thousand horses galloping". In 2001 he founded the Taiping Drum Art Troupe. In 2011 he established Taiping drum teams in a number of primary and secondary schools, carrying out the building of a transmission echelon. In 2013 he raised his own funds to launch the construction project of the Lanzhou Taiping Drum Training and Demonstration Base. Representative inheritor of the Lanzhou Taiping drum, a national-level intangible cultural heritage project in the fifth national-level batch. He led his drum team to take part in the arts festival of the 11th Asian Games and was commended by the Ministry of Culture and the Lanzhou municipal government; he won the gold award of the China International Gong and Drum Festival and the Second Chinese Folk Art Festival, jointly organized by the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and the China Folk Literature and Art Association, as well as the gold award in the sixth national Xingxing Award square dance competition organized by the Ministry of Culture.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

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

• Mouzhengfa 02-0362
• Wei Yonghong 05-2221

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

1. Lanzhou Taipinggu (Lanzhou, Gansu) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. Mouzhengfa · National Representative Bearer Archive
3. Wei Yonghong · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗