MUZI MUZIChinese Matrix

Lion Dance

The gongs sound and the lion wakes

Introduction

Dancers under a lion's head and pelt: northern lions show skill, southern lions show spirit

The lion dance is a folk dance in which one or two performers under a lion's head and pelt imitate a lion's movements to gongs and drums, at the Spring Festival, temple fairs and celebrations; other beast dances, such as the qilin dance (III-43), the fire tiger (III-48) and the playful tiger (III-118), belong to this record. Lions already led a Buddha procession in Northern Wei Luoyang, the Tang standing ensemble's Taiping yue was a dance of five lions of the five directions, and in the Song the lion passed into street troupes. Today there are two schools: the northern lion, represented by the Xushui lion dance of Hebei, stresses tumbling and leaping, while the southern lion, the xingshi of Guangdong, is joined to southern boxing and centres on the routine of plucking the greens.

Timeline

Northern and Southern Dynasties to present
547 · OriginIn 547 Yang Xuanzhi, back in ruined Luoyang, wrote the Record of the Buddhist Monasteries of Luoyang; it says that when the image of Changqiu Temple was carried out each year on the fourth day of the fourth month, evil-repelling lions led the way, an early reliable record of a lion performance.800 · EvolutionThe Tang court's standing ensemble included the Taiping yue, also called the dance of the five-direction lions: woven-fur lions with dancers inside, each coloured for its direction and led by 'lion boys' with red whisks. Bai Juyi's 'Xiliang Entertainers' describes a masked Hu man and a mock lion, its head carved of wood and its tail of silk, showing the dance also on the frontier and among ordinary people.1270 · EvolutionAmong the Lantern Festival troupes of Lin'an listed in Zhou Mi's Old Affairs of Wulin, written at the end of the Southern Song, is a troupe of lions, leopards and barbarian shields; the lion had become one of the city's festival troupes.1800 · EvolutionIn the Qing the northern lion developed in Zhili (today's Hebei) into an acrobatic martial lion, while the southern lion, or xingshi, joined southern boxing around Foshan and Nanhai in Guangdong and built its routines around plucking the greens. Wikipedia dates the xingshi to the Jiaqing reign; the national ICH site says it appeared in Nanhai county in the Ming.
  1. 547OriginIn 547 Yang Xuanzhi, back in ruined Luoyang, wrote the Record of the Buddhist Monasteries of Luoyang; it says that when the image of Changqiu Temple was carried out each year on the fourth day of the fourth month, evil-repelling lions led the way, an early reliable record of a lion performance.
  2. 800EvolutionThe Tang court's standing ensemble included the Taiping yue, also called the dance of the five-direction lions: woven-fur lions with dancers inside, each coloured for its direction and led by 'lion boys' with red whisks. Bai Juyi's 'Xiliang Entertainers' describes a masked Hu man and a mock lion, its head carved of wood and its tail of silk, showing the dance also on the frontier and among ordinary people.
  3. 1270EvolutionAmong the Lantern Festival troupes of Lin'an listed in Zhou Mi's Old Affairs of Wulin, written at the end of the Southern Song, is a troupe of lions, leopards and barbarian shields; the lion had become one of the city's festival troupes.
  4. 1800EvolutionIn the Qing the northern lion developed in Zhili (today's Hebei) into an acrobatic martial lion, while the southern lion, or xingshi, joined southern boxing around Foshan and Nanhai in Guangdong and built its routines around plucking the greens. Wikipedia dates the xingshi to the Jiaqing reign; the national ICH site says it appeared in Nanhai county in the Ming.

Heritage Listings

  1. 2006National List of Intangible Cultural Heritage1st batch · III-5 Lion dance · no. 108: Xushui lion dance · Tianta lion dance of Xiangfen · Huangsha lion of Linhai · Guangdong xingshi of Foshan · Suixi and Guangzhou
  2. 2008National List of Intangible Cultural Heritage (2nd batch, 2008: III-43 Qilin dance of Huanghua, Lankao and Haifeng, no. 640; III-48 Fire tiger of Fengtai, no. 645); 2008 extensions of III-5: Baizhifang taishi of Beijing, Cangxian lion, Xiaoxiang lion, Huaidian civil lion, mat lion of Meizhou, Yue family lion of Fengcheng, and the Bouyei high-platform lion-lantern dance of Xingyi
  3. 2011National list, 2011 extensions: III-5Maqiao hand lion · Gupi mat lion · green lion of Jieyang · Songgang seven-star lion · Tengxian lion · Tianyang Zhuang lion · Pengshui high-platform lion) and III-43 (Houma · Suixian · Shenzhen and Dongguan qilin dances
  4. 2014National List of Representative Items of Intangible Cultural Heritage4th batch · 2014: III-118 Playful tiger of Jiaozuo · no. 1271) · 2014 extensions: III-5 (Lichuan white lion) and III-43 (Hakka qilin dance of Hang Hau · Sai Kung · Hong Kong
  5. 2021National list, 2021 extensions of III-5: Shangchuan Huanglian Sheng xingshi of Bao'an, Shenzhen, and the Yao cloth-bag wooden lion dance of Lianzhou