Cover news reporter Wu Yong photo report
On the first day of the Chinese New Year, Yao Zhankai rushed to Xihua Village, Yongle Town, Gulin County, Luzhou, Sichuan, where a local lantern team is about to start the annual performance, as the representative inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage of Sichuan Province, he came to perform with this team, hoping to make the singing method and movement of the lantern team more standardized during the performance process, and add some new elements.
Speaking of ancient lanterns, people who do not understand may think that it is just a simple lamp, but it is not. The original meaning of "flower lantern" is row of lights, lanterns, lanterns, originally meant to hang during the festival to express the traditional folk crafts of celebration, and later developed into a performance form with flower lanterns as the main props, similar to the art of opera, folk called "singing flower lanterns" or "jumping lanterns", is a set of religion, folklore, song and dance, acrobatics, paper art as one of the folk cultural phenomena and folk performance art.
Xihua Village Flower Lantern Team
Unique folk art
National Intangible Cultural Heritage
On February 2, the cover reporter followed Yao Zhankai's Xihua Village lantern team and saw a more traditional form of lantern performance. The team consists of 8 people, with a small drum, a cymbal, a gong and three instruments, in addition to fans and embroidered paws and other props. The characters are Tang Er, Sister And the Old Man, and the rest are drummers. During the performance, Tang Er and his sister were responsible for the action performance, and the rest of the people played music on the side, occasionally helping to set up the cavity. The content of the singing is mainly to congratulate the New Year, say the spring annunciation and other content.
Gulin's mountain village has always had the tradition of "playing with flower lanterns and celebrating the New Year", and the performance content initially did not have a script, and the plot and lyrics were mostly improvised by the performers. Later, it gradually developed into a recorded "folding" manuscript of the lyrics of the ancient lantern, the basic plot and the action of the lantern, and the tune of the lantern was basically passed on by word of mouth by folk artists. Gulin Flower Lantern not only has a flower lantern song and dance performance, but also a dramatic taste of storyline performance, with the humor, humor, simplicity and rude performance style of "laughing, dragging, singing and dancing", commonly known as "twisting lamp".
Flower lanterns go to the countryside
From the second to the eighteenth day of the first lunar month every year, the light sheds on all roads in the village walk the streets and alleys, and enter the village to perform in the households. The performance form is mainly to open the door of the main family to welcome the lights, start to say spring, annunciation performance, rap auspicious, blessing peace after resigning from the gods, the cast members stand on the eaves of the roof drum music noisy, Tang Er, sister, the old man began to perform in the main courtyard dam, mostly folk songs and dances and sketches, there are sister blind date, Qiu Si'er playing straw shoes, Willow Baby selling lines and other programs.
In December 2014, Gulin Flower Lantern was included in the fourth batch of national intangible cultural heritage representative project list, Gulin Flower Lantern combined with the original ecological performance form and innovative and reformed stage form, toured in Sichuan, Yunnan, Qian, Chongqing and other places, and successively appeared on Sichuan Television, CCTV and so on.
Flower lanterns enter the campus
Develop in inheritance
Constantly incorporating new acting elements
"In the past two years, a lot of new content has been added, such as epidemic prevention propaganda and forest fire prevention." Yao Zhankai said that because the lanterns are more popular with the rural people, in the past two years, they have gradually begun to add new scripts and incorporate some publicity content.
However, the inheritance of flower lanterns is still the most concerned issue for non-hereditary inheritors. According to Cheng Lin, chairman of Gulin County Baolin Lantern Culture Media Co., Ltd., the bottlenecks encountered in the development of Gulin Lanterns at present mainly include small scale, shortage of funds, and shortage of talents.
Flower lantern historical image
"Yao Zhankai's lantern team has a few young people, but they will only participate during the Spring Festival, and after the Spring Festival, they will leave the team to go out to work." Cheng Lin said that now that the lantern team is older and the level of education is low, it is not easy to find the right person.
To this end, Yao Zhankai and Cheng Lin and others have also done a lot of work, in the past two years, Yao Zhankai rushed to Shibao Town, Yongle Town, etc. during the Spring Festival, hoping to integrate the lantern teams everywhere. At the same time, flower lanterns were also held in various primary schools in Gulin, hoping to attract young people to participate. Cheng Lin also compiled a new lantern script himself, integrating poverty alleviation and rural revitalization into the lantern. At present, Yao Zhankai and Cheng Lin and others are building the Gulin Flower Lantern Training Institute and adding flower lantern elements to the three agricultural products.
"I hope that the three agricultural products can feed back the ancient lin flower lanterns, so that there will be enough funds to promote the flower lanterns." Cheng Lin said.