Tiaohuapeng
01 · Historical Records
According to legend, the Flower-Shed Dance has been handed down generation by generation in Huazhou since the end of the Ming dynasty and has continued unbroken to the present day.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Flower-Shed Dance, popularly called “tiao peng” (leaping the shed), is transmitted in villages such as Changweigong and Juantangwei of Guanqiao Town, Huazhou City, Guangdong Province, and is a dance within the folk “nuo sacrifice”. After the autumn harvest every year, the villagers build a shed on the village green or in front of an earth god temple or an ancestral temple in preparation for the nuo sacrifice. Four days before the tiao peng nuo sacrifice is held, under the leadership and guidance of the old nuo dance artists, men aged sixteen or over are first selected from the village and trained together in chanting and dancing. On the appointed day, after incense has been burned and the gods welcomed and installed on their seats, the shed door is opened and the nuo dance is performed. At that point the village elder gives the signal, gongs and drums sound together, the performers put on masks carved from camphor wood, and going onto the shed one after another according to the “keben” (ritual script), they perform the nuo dance, dancing and chanting as they go. The keben comprises eighteen sections: welcoming the gods, installing the deity, opening the shed door, the children, Uncle Dao, the scholar, the young man’s song, yi qian, Chen Jiu, weeding the field, fishing, the judge, inspecting the shed, dispatching the insects, measuring the shed, the Eight Immortals, dismantling the shed, and the one-legged monk. The chants deal mainly with farm work, the feelings between men and women, anecdotes of everyday life, the driving out of evil and misfortune, and prayers that the spirits will grant favourable weather, security and plenty, and abundant grain.
The eighteen-section script
The full programme of the flower-shed dance: eighteen sections from welcoming the gods and opening the shed gate to measuring and dismantling the shed, each danced and chanted in turn.
Camphor masks and the shed
The masks are carved from camphor wood and kept by the village after use; only when the incense offerings and seating of the gods are done does the village elder give the signal to open the shed.
Four days of training before the shed opens
Four days before the rite, boys of sixteen and over are chosen and drilled in chanting and dancing by the old exorcist dancers before they may appear on the shed.
Sending off pests, measuring and dismantling
The closing sections of the eighteen: driving pests out of the fields, measuring the shed and pulling it down as the exorcist rite ends.
Zhang Zhenqian and the Changweigong masters
Born in 1939 in Wuhua county, Zhang Zhenqian learned from the Changweigong masters Yao Shitai and Yao Maotai in 1981 and wrote the entry for the Guangdong volume of the national dance compendium.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The core of transmission of the Flower-Shed Dance lies in Changweigong Village and Juantangwei Village of Guanqiao Town, Huazhou City, Guangdong Province. The two villages each have a shed ground, and a day is chosen after the autumn harvest to “make the shed”. The same nuo sacrifice tradition is also found scattered among the hill villages of central and southern Huazhou, and is linked with the tiao helou and the nuo dance of the Maoming and Zhanjiang areas in its masks, keben and gong-and-drum patterns. Each village organises the event by the shed, jointly presided over by the village elder and the old nuo dance artists; the masks, once carved from camphor wood, are stored collectively, while the keben survive both in oral transmission and in handwritten copies. After the 1970s, people such as Zhang Zhenqian went through the keben section by section in Changweigong Village and Juantangwei Village, recording the music and the words, and only then were the names and order of the eighteen sections completely recorded.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The Flower-Shed Dance displays the traditional folk rites and customs of the locality; it is both an important historical testimony for the study of local social conditions and the development of productive forces, and valuable material for the study of Huazhou folk culture and folk belief, and its historical and artistic value is precious. Zhang Zhenqian (official archive record of the associated inheritor): Male, of Han ethnicity, born in April 1939, native of Wuhua County, Guangdong Province. He began to engage in the excavation, collation and transmission of the Flower-Shed Dance in the 1970s, and in 1981 became a disciple of the old artists Yao Shitai and Yao Maotai of Changweigong Village, where the Flower-Shed Dance flourishes, and studied the dance under them. After many years of study he came thoroughly to know and master the art of the Flower-Shed Dance. The written script of the Flower-Shed Dance of which he was the principal author was included in the “Integration of Chinese National Folk Dances · Guangdong Volume”, and he is honoured as “the first person to excavate, collate and hand down the dance Flower-Shed”. Representative inheritor of the Flower-Shed Dance, a national-level intangible cultural heritage project in the fifth national batch.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Zhang Zhenqian 05-2288
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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