Blanket Lion Dance

143.Blanket Lion Dance

Nominating Unit: Fogang County, City of Qingyuan

Blanket Lion Dance, a folk dance pattern self-organized by the women in Weizhen Village, Tangtang Town, Fogang County to entertain the divinities and the people, is the most brilliant and unique folk activity among the customs in the lantern festival. It originated at the end of the Qing Dynasty, when the ancestor of the Liu family, Puzhengong, mistakenly moved Taipo’s dead body to the Houshan Liantang “shitinggu”. Later, women in this village waved the quilts to pray to Taipo for offsprings and fortune. So far, it has a history of over 140 years.

The custom includes many procedures of preparation, lighting the lamp, waving the quilt and so on from 6th to 16th in January. The preparation is led by some elder women to light the lamp in the ancestral hall of the family who have given birth to new children. The organizer will collect some money for the preparation of waving the quilt. There are two kinds of lighting the lamp, public and private. The public lamp, also called “huideng”, is to be hung by some middle aged or elder to the ancestral hall, doorways, Guandiye temple and Zhenhai temple respectively. The private lamp is hung by the women who newly born babies in the hall after they worship the places where the public lamps are hung.(https://www.daowen.com)

15th and 16th in January is the time for waving quilt and praying for blessing and protection from the divinities. On the lantern festival, only women get together to the front of Family Liu’s ancestral hall, with gongs sounded and drums played. The grandmother of newly-born boy brings over a new quilt, holding two angles high above the head, throwing the other two angles to another woman to form the end, thus consisting a whole lion. Several or even dozens of quilt lion linking together form a long line. As the gongs and drums played, the experienced old woman will lead the move and the other quilt lion would wave rhythmically. The team waving the quilt lions firstly performs in the ancestral hall, then worships Zhenhai temple, and finally performs in every family that has newly-born babies and newly married couples. On 16th January, the team performs in the order opposite to the former day. Then every family with newly-born babies carries faggot to the front of the ancestral hall and stands in a line. When the waving team comes back, gongs and drums would be played, firecrackers would be lighted to accompany the waving of quilt lion, waving with babies held, martial art performance, driving the devil spirits and lighting the firedrake, and the whole activity reaches its climax.

In this activity, women play a very important role, which reflects women’s important status in local society, culture and life. It was called “the woman’s carnival of the century”. Moreover, the activity passed on and recorded the life of the local people and expressed people’s wishes to lead a happy life. It provides precious material for the study of social development and the characters of female culture in Lingnan District.

As society, economy and culture develop, people’s ideas are changing, and the traditional folk cultural activity is gradually fading out. And as the successors of the waving quilt lion became older, how to pass down and protect this traditional folk activity has become a problem that needs urgent solution.