Yuhanggundeng
01 · Historical Records
The Yuhang rolling lantern originates in the Wengmei area of Yuhang, Zhejiang, and has a history of more than eight hundred years as a folk dance performed during festivals and lantern fairs, marked by strong competitive character. The Southern Song poet Fan Chengda depicted the rolling lantern as follows in his poem "Thirty-two Rhymes on the Festival Objects of Wuzhong in the Upper Yuan Period": "The thrown candle soars steadily into the air; the pushed globe rolls lightly on the ground", from which it can be seen that the rolling lantern was already popular in the Southern Song period. Yuhang lies in the outskirts of Hangzhou and was within the capital's immediate sphere in the Southern Song; temple fair activities of all kinds were frequent there, and since the rolling lantern was a characteristic programme that had to appear among the ceremonial processions of the old popular festivals, it naturally became very popular.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Wengmei of Yuhang again lies on the north bank of the Qiantang River; the salt trade was flourishing in ancient times, and pirates repeatedly attacked. For the several hundred years afterwards, the people of Yuhang always treated the rolling lantern as an auspicious object and a means of strengthening the body, and every Lantern Festival or temple fair (above all the Yuanshuai temple fair) it would necessarily take part in performance, and so it has been handed down from generation to generation. Moreover, few masters of the rolling lantern's manufacturing craft remain.
Nine routines and twenty-seven movements
Nine routines and twenty-seven movements that unite dance, acrobatics and sport.
The man-high, fifty-catty lantern
The inheritor Wang Miaolin could swing a lantern as tall as a man and weighing over twenty-five kilograms.
Lantern Festival and the Marshal temple fair
As a former capital suburb with frequent temple fairs, Yuhang made the rolling lantern a fixture of Lantern Festival and Marshal temple processions.
Fan Chengda's Lantern Festival verses
The Southern Song poet Fan Chengda left the lines 'the tossed candle rides steady, the pushed ball rolls light', evidence the lantern was already popular.
Men's lantern and community troupes
Community troupes were formed to keep the original men's lantern alongside renewed props and choreography.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Yuhang rolling lantern has as its core area of transmission the Linping District of Hangzhou City (formerly part of Wengmei Township, Yuhang); it belongs, together with the Haiyan rolling lantern of Zhejiang and the Fengxian rolling lantern of Shanghai, to different branches of the same "rolling lantern" item, and the construction of the lantern and the sequences differ in each. Locally, every Lantern Festival and Yuanshuai temple fair, the rolling lantern team goes out with the ceremonial procession, appearing on the same ground as the dragon lantern, horse lantern and stilt teams. As the rolling lantern is large in volume and turns rapidly, it is most useful for opening a way through crowded places.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Gundeng · Gundeng.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The Yuhang rolling lantern integrates dance, technique and sport, and has the marked characteristics of diversity, comprehensiveness and competitiveness. It has nine sets and twenty-seven performance movements, possesses unique artistic conception and typical regional character, and displays the outstanding creativity of Chinese folk dance, making it of high research value for the study of ancient folk dance. With the development of modernization and the influence of the diversification of the arts, the traditional temple fairs have mostly disappeared, opportunities for rolling lantern activity have diminished, and it is in danger of being lost. It is therefore still extremely urgent to rescue and protect the Yuhang rolling lantern. Wang Miaolin (official archival record of the associated representative inheritor): Male, Han nationality, born in September 1945, native of Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province. He was born in Wengmei Township on the banks of the Qiantang River, the place where the Yuhang rolling lantern originated. At sixteen he was already a skilled rolling lantern handler of both strength and stamina, able single-handedly to set in motion a large rolling lantern more than a person in height and weighing more than fifty jin. In the 1960s he took part in the first large-scale performance after the rolling lantern was excavated and organized. In 2008 he took part in the warm-up performances and other events preceding the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games. He has worked diligently on the transmission of the item: not only did he preserve the men's rolling lantern in its authentic original flavour and set up a community rolling lantern team, but he also, together with the dance cadres of the local cultural centre, improved the props and performance of the rolling lantern, so that the rolling lantern not only lives on among the people but has moved on to a far broader stage. Representative inheritor of the Yuhang rolling lantern, a national-level intangible cultural heritage project in the fourth national-level batch.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Wang Miaolin 04-1563
- Xu Siyan 05-2222
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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