Huolaohu
01 · Historical Records
The Fire Tiger is transmitted in Shankou Village and Huaifeng Village of Fengtai County, Anhui Province. Its performance takes the lion dance and the lantern arts of the Huai River region as its basis and weaves such roles as the tiger, the male lion, the female lion, the lion cub, the god of land and the lion leader into a single scene. Performances are fixed between the third and the fifteenth day of the first lunar month of the year each year. Making the tiger body requires paulownia boards, bamboo strips, twisted straw cord and mulberry branches, so the production cycle is long and the village often begins gathering materials as early as the winter of the previous year.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Fire Tiger is a folk dance transmitted in Shankou Village and Huaifeng Village of Fengtai County, Anhui Province, with a history of a thousand years; its performance activities are generally held between the third and the fifteenth day of the first lunar month of the year. The props used in the Fire Tiger are divided into three parts, the tiger head, the tiger body and the tiger tail, and they show the characteristics of exaggeration and freehand stylisation. To make the tiger head, bamboo strips are first bound into a frame and twisted straw cord is then fastened onto it; to make the tiger body, twenty-one paulownia boards are joined together with fine iron wire, twelve equally spaced small holes are drilled in each paulownia board, and twisted straw cord is then fitted into the small holes; finally mulberry branches are bent into an upturned shape, and the tiger tail is made. When the performer makes up, he puts on an old man's cap that protects the head and neck and leaves only the eyes exposed, then puts on tight-fitting clothes, drapes a wet burlap sack over him, pulls on gloves, then ties the tiger skin, tiger head and tiger tail onto his body and holds a stick in each hand as the front paws of the tiger. In a Fire Tiger performance there are such roles as the tiger, the male lion, the female lion, the lion cub, the god of land and the lion leader; in performance the male lion and the female lion first enter and play the "four gates", and then the female lion lies down on the ground, preparing to give birth to a lion cub. After the cub is born it pays homage to the four directions, and then the male lion, the female lion and the cub tease and romp with one another. Unable to hold off the two lions, the Fire Tiger, its whole body ablaze, throws itself into the water pond, and only then does the performance come to an end. The whole performance interweaves the warm scene of the lioness giving birth with the fierce scene of lion and tiger in combat, well balanced in tension and brimming with wit.
Head, body and tail
The tiger prop has three parts in an expressive style: a bamboo head set with fuse cords, a body of paulownia boards and a tail of mulberry bent upward.
Twenty-one boards, twelve holes each
The body joins twenty-one paulownia boards with fine wire; each board is drilled with twelve evenly spaced holes to hold fuse cords that are lit during the show.
The lions' four gates and the cub
The male and female lions first dance the four gates, the lioness lies down to bear a cub which salutes the four directions, and the family then plays together.
The fire tiger plunges into the pond
In the last phase the fire tiger attacks and the lions fight it off; beaten, the tiger plunges blazing into the pond and the performance ends.
The performer's gear
The dancer wears a hood leaving only the eyes visible, a close-fitting suit, a wet gunny sack and gloves, then straps on the skin, head and tail with a stick in each hand as forepaws.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Shankou Village and Huaifeng Village of Fengtai County are the main places where the Fire Tiger is practised, and the performers are mostly sturdy adult men of the villages. In 1996, the inheritor Sun Yongchao led the villagers to re-make the Fire Tiger props, to assemble a performance team and to restore the Fire Tiger performance; besides performing locally according to custom, he also led the team out many times to take part in various kinds of folk performance activities at provincial and municipal level, and he taught the younger performers of the village both by demonstration and by instruction.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
When the Fire Tiger appears, the male lion and the female lion, in order to protect the cub, engage it in a fight to the death. The Fire Tiger performance embodies the hardworking, hard-wearing spiritual character and the firm, optimistic life belief of the people of the Huai River region, and it has research value in folklore studies and in other fields. At present, this unique folk art form has fallen into a predicament in its development and faces an existential crisis; it urgently needs protection and transmission. Sun Yongchao (as recorded in the official archive of the associated inheritor): male, Han ethnicity, born in October 1923, a native of Fengtai County, Anhui Province. He afterwards took part in performances, mainly playing the lion; his movements are uninhibited and bold, his image vivid and lifelike, and he can adapt and re-arrange the original forms according to the needs of the performance, which makes him a lantern player of some local fame. In 1996, he led the villagers to re-make the Fire Tiger props, to assemble a performance team and to restore the Fire Tiger performance; besides performing locally according to custom, as before, he also led the team out many times to take part in various kinds of folk performance activities at provincial and municipal level. Over many years, in order to promote the transmission and development of the Fire Tiger and its publicity and popularisation, he has taught and carefully guided the younger performers of the village by demonstration and by instruction. Representative inheritor of the third national-level batch of the national intangible cultural heritage project Fire Tiger.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Sun Yongchao 03-0934
- Sun Yuanduo
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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