*Cantonese Waking Lion Dance

*Cantonese Waking Lion Dance

Nominating Units: City of Foshan, Suixi County, City of Zhanjiang and City of Guangzhou

Waking Lion, which belongs to Nanshi (the lion of the south) of Chinese lion dance, evolved from the court lion dance of the Tang Dynasty. After the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms (907 B. C.~960 B. C.), the culture of lion dance spread to Lingnan as the people in the Central Plain immigrated to the south. In the Ming Dynasty, Waking Lion turned up in Nanhai County, Guangdong Province. It is now popular in Guangdong Province, Guangxi Zhuang Minority Autonomous Region and the overseas Chinese communities in southeast Asian countries. As to Guangdong Province, it prevails mainly in the City of Foshan and Guangzhou and Suixi County.

Waking Lion is a cultural activity merging martial art, dance with music. At the beginning of this activity, there is a prelude called “Kaizhuang”, during which gongs and drums as well as Nanquan(Southern Boxing) are played. Then two persons dance to play a lion, and the third person wears a mask of “Datoufo” and holds a large palm fan, leading the lion to the stage. The lion dancers, mainly at a horse stance, play lion act of “Zhengyan” (opening the eyes), “Xixu” (washing the beard),“Tianmao” (licking the body) and “Doumao” (shaking). They will also represent the set patterns of“Caiqing” (picking the green), “Gaotaiyinshui” (drinking on a hathpace), “Shizituqiu” (spitting small balls) and “Caimaihuazhuang” (stepping on the staggered pilings). Among them, “Caiqing” is the soul, dramatic with a detailed plot and a full processes of the beginning, the continuation, the turn and the ending. Through its development, “Caiqing” has derived several variations and spread widely. Suixi Waking Lion has been going through changes from the traditional dance on the floor (“Dishi”) to the stool (“Dengshi”), the hathpace (“Gaotaishi”), the tall pole (“Gaoganshi”) and finally to the staggered piling (“Zhuangshi”). The difficulty of “Zhuangshi” is also increasing, adding the performances of ropewalker and flight jumping. The highest pile is about 3 meters with the largest span between piles up to 3.7 meters, fully revealing the characteristics of “New, High, Hard and Risky”, and therefore called “A Chinese Special Feat”. The charateristics of the stage property of Shakeng Waking Lion in Guangzhou are as follows: narrow and high forehead, big and rollable eyes, wide mouth, broad back, fl at nose, plump cheek, and the teeth can be hiden or revealed. The performance can be divided into“Wenshi”, “Wushi” and “Shaoshi”, with the challenging acts of fl y, move, dodge, pounce, convolution and leap to perform the lion’s expression of happiness, anger, sadness, joy, moving, calm, shock and doubt and its bravery and power.(https://www.daowen.com)

Since ancient times, Cantonese Waking Lion Dance has been considered as an auspicious thing to expel the devil and avoid the evil. Whenever there is a festival or a significant event, there will be Waking Lion Dance to add to the fun. Since 1980s, nearly every county has its own Waking Lion Dance team playing all the year round to celebrate festivals or the openning of a business. The art of Waking Lion Dance is also popularized among counties and floks. Cantonese Waking Lion Dance has become the particular folk dance brand in Guangdong Province that is famous all over China. The act of Waking Lion Dance is also prevalent in overseas Chinese communities, serving as a cultural bridge to connect the oversea Chinese to China, with far-reaching significance and cultural value.

Cantonese Waking Lion Dance was selected into the list of the first batch of state-level intangible cultural heritage in 2006.