Lantern Dance

44.Lantern Dance

Nominating Unit: Yingde Municipality, City of Qingyuan

Lantern Dance is a folk dance popular among Qingxi and Hongfeng villages, Shakou Township, City of Yingde. Legend has it that the dance was introduced into this area by Hakka people from who immigrated Central Plains in the Ming Dynasty, with Qingxi Village being the most representative and thriving.

The main props used in Qingxi Lantern Dance includes two big lanterns and two small ones, a spinning wheel, two paper fans with soft edges, and two soft handkerchiefs. The lanterns are two-layered and octagonal, made of bamboo strips. The inner layer is made up of tissue paper, and the outer layer is made up of colored paper. An elaborately made rotary oil lamp is placed inside the lantern. No matter what the size of the oil lamp is, the making is all the same.(https://www.daowen.com)

Qingxi Lantern Dance is normally performed by 8 persons, with four men and four women. Two men hold a small lantern in one hand and wave a fan in the other hand. The other two men operate the spinning wheel. Two women hold the big lanterns, with the other two playing the roles of mother and daughter. The dance is actually dancing plus singing. The dance tells a story in which the mother and daughter of a rich landlord’s family are carried in a cart by poor workers to have fun in a New Year carnival. Although the workers hold lamps and wave fans for them while pulling the cart, they also tease them with all kinds of expressions and movements only to embarrass them. A story of poor people teasing the rich is rendered in a humorous manner. The dancing movements feature both the passion of northern yangge (a popular northern folk dance) and the delicacy of Tea Picking Dance of northern Guangdong Province. The accompaniment is mainly orchestral, with flutes, Three Strings, erhu, etc. to be the main instruments used. The melody has rich Tea Picking ditty style of northern Guangdong Province.

Qingxi Lantern Dance normally starts after dinner on the eve of Lunar New Year and lasts until Lantern Festival. The dance concludes with a dismissal ceremony nicknamed “killing the lantern”, in which all performers of the night would gather in front of the ancestral temple of the village, put all lanterns from the performance together and burn them. This indicates the conclusion of the performance. Since “lantern” pronounces the same as “male” in Hakka dialect, the villagers would shout out “lantern is coming” when the lantern team reaches a village, which means “male baby coming to each household”. This is why the lantern dance is so popular.

Qingxi Lantern Dance is the valuable evidence in studying the evolution of China’s lantern dance and possesses certain historical and cultural value. However, due to certain reasons, its transmission is faced with a breakdown, and effective protective measures are called for.