Text, video/ Yangcheng Evening News reporter Zhu Shaojie intern Chen Xiaonan
Photo/Provided by respondent (unless attributed)
In December 2021, the animated film "Lion Boy" was released. For more than a month, the awakened lion, rooted in centuries of south China, has been put in the spotlight. From CCTV to Douyin, the heat of waking lions has risen.
In the daily life of Cantonese people, waking lions is everywhere. Regardless of urban and rural areas, whenever festivals and openings, dragon and lion dances are a necessary ceremony. Over the past three decades, the awakening lion has quietly changed. Drum beats from the depths of history echo little-known stories.
January 30, 2022 Yangcheng Evening News A7
A sense of identity and pride in my bones
Watching the protagonist in "The Lion Boy" jump forward, Zhao Weibin, the fifth generation of "Zhao Jiashi" and president of the Guangzhou Workers' Awakening Lion Association, remembered that when he was nine years old, he debuted on stage: tens of thousands of spectators, from the stage to the river, all eyes were focused on him. Standing on the central platform of the cultural park, he looked around nervously and excitedly. Raising the lion's head and stepping on the drum, he became the protagonist.
On January 24, Zhao Weibin and Sun Haipeng, director of "The Lion Boy", shared the story behind the film with the audience at the Ping An Grand Theater. Most of the audience at the sharing meeting were workers from the Guangzhou Bus Group Awakening Lion Association.
The film shines into reality, and they are the protagonists of the lion's head and the lion's quilt. At the moment of the photo, two young people who woke up the lion even resembled the characters in the movie. "The film is so touching because it comes from the truth." Zhao Weibin said to Sun Haipeng.
Zhao Weibin (first from left) and Sun Haipeng (middle) shared the story behind the film with the audience at the Ping An Grand Theatre
Sun Haipeng's "passers-by turning powder" to wake up the lion, and even the opportunity to create "Lion Boy" also came from a personal experience. Born in Hubei Province, Sun Haipeng has only entered his daily life since settling in Guangzhou in 2010. Once during a Chinese New Year vacation in Thailand, Sun Haipeng met a wake-up lion team from China to perform on stage in a mall in a foreign country.
The drum beat sounded, and Sun Haipeng's tears could not stop falling. "It's a particularly mixed emotion, with a sense of identity and pride in my bones." Sun Haipeng told the Yangcheng Evening News reporter: "From that moment on, I felt the need to use the film to present this complex emotion. ”
The whole film took two years from conception to final presentation. During this period, the production team spent nearly half of the time collecting styles, communicating with the coaches and members of the lion dance team, and understanding the dance methods and training of waking lions. These materials are finally integrated into the film, especially highlighting the images of waking lions and Lingnan ancestral halls and kapok. Because "they are all cultural symbols of Guangzhou." ”
The lion ceremony at the premiere of "The Lion Boy"
In fact, before doing "Lion Boy", Sun Haipeng's team had not paid a salary for half a year. He said the film fit the way they were injured at the time. The team finally finished the film with a hard scalp, just like the protagonist Ah Juan kept moving forward during the game, walking to the end, watching the "Optimus Prime" jump out of the high place and in the distance.
Today, this movie without IP and no big coffee has been scored 8.3 on Douban, which has become the most influential work since Sun Haipeng started his career.
A stroke of great color in recent history
In the past, Sun Haipeng only knew that the lion dance was a Chinese cultural symbol, and his understanding of it was relatively vague. Because of the film production, he began to study lion dance, and became more and more aware of the exquisite skill of this skill.
Sun Haipeng said: "Waking up the lion is part of daily life, because it is so familiar, not many people take the time to understand it deeply. Peng Weiwen, an associate professor at Zhejiang Normal University, has spent twenty years on and off on the study and writing of waking lions.
Twenty years ago, Peng Weiwen was a student of the Chinese Department of Sun Yat-sen University. Because of a chance, this authentic Guangzhou native went with his mentor Ye Chunsheng to guangzhou Panyu Shakeng Village to see the awakening lion, thus entering the world of the awakening lion.
In August 2021, Peng Weiwen's "Investigation on the Social History of guangdong lion inheritance" was published as a project funded by the National Social Science Foundation. The book reveals the close relationship between the people in the waking lion and the great currents of the times.
Guangzhou Awakening Lion performs a plum blossom jumping in Shanghai
In modern times, China's traditional economy and society have undergone tremendous changes. In the Pearl River Delta, at the forefront of the times, peasants left the land and separated from the clan. Faced with a strange and uncertain life, the new immigrants leaned over to learn martial arts and took care of each other, entering the martial arts hall and organizing into a new group.
At this time, the skill of waking the lion is the façade of the martial arts hall. The descendants of the awakening lion are part of the emerging class that emerged in the process of the transformation of local China. The "West Family Tour" that organized workers and martial arts centers should have emerged from time to time, and later evolved into workers' organizations to fight for the rights and interests of workers.
In the turbulent modern history, the awakening lion people have left a strong mark. According to Peng Weiwen's comb, it was Li Su, the owner of the small workshop, who led his brothers to attack foshan's Qianzong Yamen during the Xinhai Revolution; Liang Guihua, a barber who was in charge of transporting weapons at the Hongsheng Martial Arts Museum during the Guangzhou Uprising; Liu Jialiang, who began to participate in the earliest Huang Feihong film production since he was more than ten years old, and grew up to become an important action director in the history of Chinese cinema with his own wisdom and persistence, is the fourth generation of Huang Feihong.
Especially in the "awakening era", the people in the martial arts hall were an important force in the CCP's workers' movement. Liang Guihua, who founded the Barber Workers' Union in his early years, was one of them, selling the Yunfu ancestral house, placing farewell to his wife and daughter, and becoming a professional revolutionary who walked ahead.
During the Guangzhou Uprising, Liang Guihua cooperated with Zhou Wenyong in organizing and reorganizing the Workers' Red Guards, and served as the deputy commander-in-chief of the Workers' Red Guards. When the uprising was reported by traitors, it was Liang Guihua who delivered the information to the headquarters in a timely manner. In the later battles, Liang Guihua led the death squad to open the way and died in front of the current Guangdong Medical Hospital at the age of 34.
Waking lions have undergone changes from the inside out
The Guangzhou Workers' Lion Awakening Association is located in a corner of the First Workers' Cultural Palace in Guangzhou, and the not spacious main entrance hangs Guan Shanyue's autograph inscription. If it weren't for the huge mural of the lion awakening painted in front of the door recently, it would not be so easy to find here.
In the autumn of 2006, Peng Weiwen came here to find Zhao Weibin's father, Zhao Jihong. In this year, Guangdong Xingshi was selected into the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage list without suspense.
Founded in 1985, the association is a product of the times. After 1949, wuguan and xijiaxing, which were social groups, were replaced by trade unions, and waking lions as amateur activities of laborers survived in the form of amateur lion teams of enterprises and institutions, and began a new road of inheritance.
Guangzhou Workers Wake Up Lion Association Office (Photo by Chen Xiaonan)
In the past, the Awakening Lion emphasized the teaching of master and apprentice, based on different martial arts schools, so the footwork was varied. In order to complete the official reception task, Zhao Jihong started from the unified footwork, standardized the process and action of waking the lion, and the "welcome lion" was born. The year after the association was founded, he formulated a set of rules that would make every movement of the lion have a corresponding standard.
The back of the head of the Lion Awakening often has the name of the genre and the group written on it, but the Lion's Head has neither the genre nor the name of the Association. "No turf, no walls." In a conversation with Peng Weiwen, Zhao Jihong said. He told all members from the beginning not to join the association if they emphasized their genre. Peng Weiwen believes that the "welcome lion" is the result of the inheritance and self-transformation of the lion, reflecting the trajectory of the guangzhou lion since the founding of New China.
Zhao Weibin told reporters that his father did not even mention "Zhao JiaShi", because "if there is a faction, there is a fight", "the lion dance is a folk art, at most there is a distinction between the north and the south, and there should not be a dispute between the sects that were often found in the past martial arts."
On New Year's Day 2022, Grandview Plaza held a lion awakening competition
In the hands of Zhao Weibin's generation, the awakening lion has undergone changes from the inside out. Dozens of lion heads now hang in the association's offices of varying sizes. As a key prop, the lion's head has reduced its weight in recent years to adapt to different groups of people, and has been labeled with LED lights or painted with fluorescent materials for evening performances.
"Don't say that a hundred years ago, even the lion woke up thirty years ago, it is very different from today." Zhao Weibin said that today's most attractive high jump pile is only thirty years. At the earliest, the lion danced on the octagonal bowl on the ground, which combined with the plum blossom stake in the southern fist, causing the lion to jump into the air. "Everyone looks at it, it's so beautiful! Strong ornamental, high difficulty, more in line with the current aesthetic. ”
This change has narrowed the distance with the audience, and among the newly popular waking lion short videos, the pile is the most popular, some of which are less than a minute long and have been played more than a million times.
The old mayor Li Ziliu said to him: You can do better
The last memorable time Waking Lion appeared in the film was in "Lion King Battle" in the 1990s, which interpreted the story of Huang Feihong. Through the lion dance, the protagonist changes the fate of himself and even the nation.
Zhao Weibin, who was 20 years old at the time, participated in the performance of "Lion King Battle". Previously, he studied business administration at university and worked in government after graduation. But the old mayor Li Ziliu said to him: "Your father's generation has a low level of education, they can pass on the awakening lion so well, you are a college student, you can do better." Because of this sentence, Zhao Weibin decided to resign and "abandon the government and follow the lion."
Over the years, the inheritance of Waking Lion in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area has continued, and Zhao Weibin has also grown from a movie stand-in of that year to an influential promoter of Waking Lion culture.
"Intangible cultural heritage is a living process of inheritance." In Zhao Weibin's view, the inheritance of waking lions needs to be creatively changed, such as the ornamental high jump pile has been popularized and fixed. In 2002, the "International Dragon and Lion Dance Competition Rules and Adjudication Law" was promulgated and implemented, forming a detailed scoring system. Since then, waking the lion has become a competitive sport with both difficulty and beauty, and circling and jumping on the pile has become the most important skill of the lion dance.
Wake up lion cultural and creative products
In recent years, Zhao Weibin has made more attempts. For example, the elements of the awakening lion are extracted and made into cultural and creative products such as brooches, jewelry, and children's building blocks; for the awakening lion to enter the campus, Zhao Weibin launched the awakening lion exercise, which enters the daily life of the child in the form of recess exercise; when introducing the awakening lion overseas, he said that this is a "unicorn", so that foreigners can "understand in seconds" and applaud. He took in more than 60 disciples in Italy, and when these foreigners danced lions in Chinatown, they proudly said: The awakening lion comes from China, from Guangzhou.
The development of props and techniques shows that waking lions is both traditional and open. After watching "The Lion Boy", Peng Weiwen asked his sister Xu Jiali: "Have you heard that the lion dance has Optimus Prime?" Xu Carrie replied: "I only know that Transformers have Optimus Prime." In the face of change, some lion wakers show an open mind to this: perhaps the settings made for the plot in the movie will also be absorbed by the current or future lion people, thus becoming a "new tradition".
Waking a lion can't change lives, but it can change people
"Optimus Prime" is the artistic setting for the plot in the movie, which does not exist in reality. It was a tall pile that could not be crossed, a metaphor for a mountain beyond the mountain. Whether in the movie plot or in reality, the most difficult thing to cross is life.
"The moment he took off the lion's head, he was an ordinary man again." Zhao Weibin said that he was a senior, a peer, a student, and himself. Today, Zhao Weibin needs to face a lot of transactional work: from campus promotion and commercial performance itinerary, to publicity strategy, cultural and creative development, and so on. Especially at the end of the year and the beginning of the year, after three or four activities every day, Zhao Weibin had to return to the office to work overtime to write materials and write summaries until late at night.
Xu Jiali has been doing intangible cultural heritage records and promotion work in Guangzhou and surrounding areas for a long time. "Unless, like President Zhao, there is a fixed institution dedicated to the awakening lion inheritance." Otherwise, it is difficult to wake up the lion to become the main business. Xu Jiali said that at present, many intangible cultural heritage is keen to enter the campus, especially in the context of "double subtraction", and waking lions is no exception. But there is no former (money) way, which is the impression of many people on waking up the lion. This has also become an embarrassment for waking lions into the campus and even passing on.
Waking Lion has become an Internet celebrity, which has nothing to do with Chen Yaoxiong, who has been passed down from three generations of Waking Lion. At present, what worries him the most is that the Village of Changban in Baiyun District, where he is located, is likely to be due to insufficient funds, and even the New Year's Lion Awakening Spring Celebration cannot be organized. In the past, Chen Yaoxiong had many division brothers, and as he grew older, the same door went to work, only he insisted on organizing the lion team. Because his stable income comes from collecting rent.
Waking lion wall in Changhong Primary School, Changban Village, Baiyun District (Photo by Chen Xiaonan)
Chen Yaoxiong has been a lion awakening coach in the village primary school for many years, and he spends a lot of time and energy on convincing parents. Many parents are worried that playing with the lion will delay their children's learning, and some parents believe that naughty children will play with the lion. In the early days when Zhao Weibin tried to bring the waking lion into the campus, he preferred the key primary and secondary schools, and even went to the university to promote the awakening lion, trying to break the prejudice.
Chen Yaoxiong often reflects that young people can't stick to waking lions, perhaps because the attraction of waking lions is not enough. Young people say that they are busy with their studies and work, perhaps all as an excuse. In his opinion, the continuation of the awakening lion on most young people is only a problem, and it only takes an hour to play even a month. But with this bit of leisure, young people may be more willing to play with mobile phones.
But Chen Yaoxiong also saw that for students whose academic performance was not satisfactory, by participating in the lion awakening competition and working together with their peers to achieve results, they could bring them a sense of achievement and self-esteem from outside their studies. And Zhao Weibin believes that in addition to being strong and healthy, waking up the lion can also enhance the spirit of the individual.
Zhao Weibin and Xingshi entered the campus
The "lion teenagers" that Sun Haipeng came into contact with were some sixteen or seventeen-year-old children. They don't have much idea, even if they go to the competition to get the rank, they don't make a living from it, let alone change their fate.
"Most children will still find an errand in society after a few years in the Lions, just like the salted fish in the movie, and they will come out to show their skills during the New Year's Festival." These young people work hard to live and walk their own path steadily and calmly, which constitutes the spiritual outlook of the film characters. Sun Haipeng said: "Waking up the lion cannot change life, but it can change people. ”
"Waking the lion is their ticket to the outside world." Peng Weiwen's research shows that The Awakening Lion once let the villagers of Shakeng Village out of the rural land, thus discovering another kind of spiritual and even life possibilities. Just like those ordinary and great sages in the revolutionary era, they raised the lion's head, stepped on the drum, and leaped towards the invisible "Optimus Prime" in life.
Sun Haipeng
Sun Haipeng (director of "The Lion Boy"):
Join a fight scene similar to Wong Fei Hung's movie
Yangcheng Evening News: Waking Lion has been developing and inheriting. In the movie, how to show the current and history of waking up the lion? What do you think of some of the critical voices?
Sun Haipeng: The lion awakening competition section in the movie has undergone a certain artistic treatment. In the early days, we studied how to perform the high pile to wake up the lion, and we also watched a lot of games. But if it is faithfully restored, the viewing of the movie will be weaker. In the end, we made the game more complicated, adding a fight scene similar to Huang Feihong's movie, to mobilize the audience's emotions, and put the most classic high pile awakening lion at the end, which constituted the climax of the film.
There are some irrational or extreme views on the Internet, which we certainly did not expect and do not recognize at all. That's imposed, and we don't mean that at all. We attach great importance to professional opinions and have been collecting them. In the early stage, I also read a lot of inheritance and research books, and many experts gave their opinions. But objectively it is difficult to explain everything clearly in an hour and a half of movie time.
Some of the traditions of waking lions, we do not show enough in the film, but also retain some elements, hoping to impress the audience, if you are interested, you can learn more about it yourself.
Yangcheng Evening News: After the release of "Lion Boy", what is the biggest sense of achievement and regret?
Sun Haipeng: There is no particularly big regret, at the beginning we were all looking forward to the box office of the film, but now we may not be able to achieve it. What makes me happiest is that more and more people are paying attention to waking up lions and paying attention to traditional culture. After the movie was released, I found that there were more voices in reality and on the Internet, more videos on the life of waking lions were filmed, uploaded and played, and more voices talking about how traditional culture was passed on.
That's the most rewarding, more than the fears at the box office and the pressure from some "false" charges.
Zhao Weibin
Zhao Weibin (the fifth generation of "Zhao Jiashi" and president of the Guangzhou Workers' Awakening Lion Association):
The mobile phone is their master
Yangcheng Evening News: How do you view the awakening lion moving towards competitiveness?
Zhao Weibin: In the past, lion heads were very heavy, and now children are very tired if they want to use this lion head. Why can't it be improved? Many intangible cultural heritage projects are constantly improving and adapting to the development of different eras, so that we have the way we see it today.
At that time, we could see lion dances in openings and festivals, many of which were carried out on the ground, lively and lively, but the sense of competition was not strong. Later, we developed to the high altitude, stepping on high piles to climb high poles, and the ornamental was stronger.
After the competition, the biggest change is that the lions pay more attention to scientific training. We assign the focus of learning according to the individual characteristics of the students, such as someone suitable for lion head, some suitable for lion tail, and some suitable for drumming. Scientific training methods can go a thousand miles a day. If you only know how to practice hard as before, you may fall ill at the age of thirty or forty. We have produced textbooks with different training methods for different age groups. This will help to better pass on the lion awakening.
Yangcheng Evening News: What has the development of technology brought to the awakening of lions?
Zhao Weibin: Today's children, the mobile phone is their master, see other people dancing lions beautifully, they download it, learn how people dance. You may not have known before that the world is so big, and there are so many tall people. Now it can be collected through scientific and technological means, learned and referenced, and continuously improved and upgraded. However, if the basic skills are not practiced well, it is easy to be injured, and they must be taught the appropriate methods in time.
Peng Weiwen (Associate Professor, Zhejiang Normal University):
Re-acquaint yourself with the awakening lion through the movie
Yangcheng Evening News: How do you see the changes in waking lions?
Peng Weiwen: The Southern School martial arts value the kung fu of the next plate, so there are not many jumping movements to wake up the lion. Waking lion is now more like a sport, lowering the threshold of previous martial arts. In the previous martial arts halls and Xijiaxing, there was its own set of rules and regulations, forming a manner of etiquette and inheritance, and producing a social structure. But as society changes, the function of this social structure disappears.
Xu Ke's film can be said to be the liberation of waking lions. At this point, the awakening lion has become an object that everyone can "process". Without The liberation of Xu Ke, it is possible that the awakening lion will slowly disappear with the changes in its original social foundation. After Xu Ke, many people knew about the existence of the waking lion, and even re-acquainted with the waking lion through the movie.
Peng Weiwen,"On the Social History of Guangdong Awakening Lion Inheritance"
Yangcheng Evening News: What is the inspiration for past research on the present moment of waking up lions?
Peng Weiwen: In the past, martial artists would have some attachment to their own genres. But in general, to be able to make a living and continue to do what you want, you may need to work around. President Zhao Jihong introduced the skills of the Northern Lion Acrobatics to the Awakening Lion to make it look more lively. It can be said that it is a kind of workaround attempt. By the late 1990s, Lion Awakening began to use tall stakes in athletics. At that time, Zhao Jihong did not like it very much, but he would still use it when necessary.
They can be said to be open, inclusive, flexible, and do not have the attachment to the old things that we think. Optimus Prime in "The Lion Boy" does not exist in reality. But I found that some masters did not resent it when they saw it, and said that optimus primes might appear in the future?
Source | Yangcheng Evening News Yangcheng Pie
Editor-in-charge | Wu Xiaopan