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【Into the Studio】
On December 18, 2023, Guangdong officially announced that "the climate is in winter", and a cold wave is coming. At four o'clock in the morning, the downtown area of Puning is steaming: the supper restaurants on the streets have not yet closed, and the figures of the vegetable market are stocking up...... In the Nanshan Community Neighborhood Committee, the sound of mallets of Ying singing and dancing sounded in the night sky.
Chen Laifa, the national representative inheritor of Puningying song and dance, is leading the members of the Nanshan Ying Song Team to nervously prepare for the performance after dawn.
During the Spring Festival of the Year of the Rabbit, the "Chinese War Dance" British song and dance exploded at home and abroad. At that time, a reporter from Yangcheng Evening News interviewed Chen Laifa for the first time.
A year after they became "popular", we came to Jieyang Puning again, interviewed Chen Laifa again, filmed and recorded the whole day itinerary of the Nanshan Ying Song Team from night training to performance, and explored the changes and development of Ying Song and Dance on the spot.
Plant the seeds of inheritance
In 2024, Chen Laifa will usher in the 50th year of his relationship with British singing and dancing. He joined the Puning Nanshan Village Junior Singing Team at the age of 18 and went from a training Xi to later becoming the captain and coach of the Nanshan Singing Team, saying that the past year has been his busiest in decades.
Chen Laifa walked in front of the English song and dance wall painting in Nanshan Village
In Puning, there are hundreds of English song teams all over the township, but as the representative of Allegro English song, "Nanshan Ying Song" is the most famous team.
With the popularity of Puningying's singing and dancing out of the circle, many foreign tourists came to see their sassy dancing on the spot. Therefore, in the past year, Chen Laifa and his English singing team have continued to increase their performances, and have also gone out of the Chaoshan area many times to appear in some folk performances in Shenzhen, Foshan and other places.
It was the end of the year and the beginning of the year, and Chen Laifa's schedule was full. He showed us a paper note of all the trips for the coming month:
On January 15, 2024, the new Nanshan Yingge Inheritance Base will be completed and opened, and he is making the final sprint for this......
Chen Laifa led us to see the Nanshan Yingge Inheritance Base, which he poured the most energy into this year. The base is located on the main road of Nanshan Village, and the walls on both sides of the road are painted with many main characters of English singing and dancing: Guan Sheng, the "head mallet" with a red face and red beard, Li Kui, the "second mallet" with a black face and black beard, Shi Qian, the snake catcher, Lin Chong, the head of the leopard, and Sun Erniang, the dominatrix ......
"The base used to be where I went to elementary school. Chen Laifa said. Now the base under construction has received strong local support, and after completion, it will be equipped with an English song exhibition hall, a drill hall, a practice room, a dressing room, etc., which will become a landmark of Puning Ying song and dance.
At the end of the Yingge painted wall is Puning Nanshan Primary School, and the Yingge Art Exhibition Hall is set up on the campus of the primary school. Chen Laifa has put a lot of treasures here, including the costumes and props of the past dynasties, the medals and pennants won by the Nanshan Yingge team, and his national intangible cultural heritage inheritor certificate.
Chen Laifa cherishes very much, as well as dozens of English song "small face" stone paintings in a corner of the exhibition hall. In his opinion, these stone paintings are the seeds of the inheritance of English singing and dancing planted in the hearts of children.
The faces of the children of Nanshan Elementary School painted on the stones
Communication brings new opportunities
At 4 o'clock in the morning, in the building of the Nanshan Community Neighborhood Committee, the members of the Nanshan Ying Song Team were putting on makeup for today's performance. Three makeup artists started their work at 3 a.m., painting the faces of more than 30 team members. While waiting, this group of childish teenagers played games, swiped Tik Tok, and played with each other.
"They might be late for school if they wake up at 7 a.m., but let them dance and get up at 2 a.m. Chen Laifa said that most of the local boys have left their mark on the growth of English singing and dancing. Some of them have specialized in English singing and dancing, some often cheer for their friends' performances and rehearsals, and some are fathers, sons, and brothers who participate in the same English singing team together.
The "group pet" in the team, 6-year-old "Hour Move" Chen Kaiming, became popular on the video platform this year and was affectionately called "Snake Treasure" by netizens. His father is the "second hammer" in the team, playing the role of Li Kui.
"Hour migration" Chen Kaiming has become an Internet celebrity
Almost all the members of the Ying Song Team have their own Douyin accounts, and they release live broadcasts of Ying Song and Dance in front of and behind the scenes, rehearsals or performances from time to time, showing netizens their true selves after removing makeup and hair. Chen Laifa also opened his own Douyin account this year, and the Nanshan Yingge Team also opened an official account on the fifteenth day of the first month of the Year of the Rabbit.
Chen Laifa sighed: "I hope that every English singing team will have the opportunity to go out of the villages and towns, out of Puning, and perform on a bigger stage." The recording and dissemination of short videos has undoubtedly increased this possibility, allowing British singing and dancing to be seen by more people. ”
No matter where they are, growing up or growing old, Chaoshan people can be "homesick" by the sound of the mallet of English singing and dancing. Since the beginning of this year, there have been many cases of the "phenomenal" popularity of Lingnan cultural heritage. Many unedited British singing and dancing performances and training videos can get tens of thousands of likes and hundreds of thousands of views.
Make a difference for the sake of the legacy
Chen Laifa told us that in the past, there was a rule that British singing and dancing was "passed on inside but not outside, and men but not women". Nowadays, similar "ancestral teachings" are quietly changing.
The Nanshan Ying Song Team is performing
Especially seeing the current situation of British singing and dancing this year, Chen Laifa realized that if he wants to inherit and carry forward the British singing and dancing, he must let more people enter the queue of British singing and dancing.
He said that the members of the English song team all use their spare time to get together to train and perform, and most of them belong to "generating electricity for love", and the common purpose of everyone is to strive to inherit the most traditional English song and dance, "leaving the original taste of the ancestors".
In 2017, Chen Laifa took advantage of the "intangible cultural heritage into the campus" and set up a youth singing team with Nanshan Primary School as a teaching position, and repeatedly led the team to participate in provincial and municipal performances. Today, nearly half of the members of the Nanshan Yingge Team are teenagers trained by the first batch of "Yingge into the Campus" in 2017.
In 2020, the Youth Singing Team also participated in the performance of the Guangdong Satellite TV Bay Area Spring Festival Gala, showing more people the "soul of Yingge" that has been passed down from generation to generation and is endless. This team has become the reserve force of the Nanshan Yingge team.
"I have discussed with several backbones of the English singing team the inheritance of English singing and dancing, and I hope that British singing and dancing can expand the teaching scope, regardless of local and foreign areas, whether boys and girls, as long as they want to learn, we are welcome. Chen Laifa said.
On June 27, 2023, the construction of Nanshan Yingge Inheritance Base officially started. In the following school season, more than 380 students, both boys and girls, signed up for the English singing and dancing course at Nanshan Primary School.
"After Puning Ying Song and Dance became a national intangible cultural heritage in 2006, it not only belongs to Nanshan Village, nor does it belong only to Puning, but a cultural heritage shared by the country. Chen Laifa, who was wearing a white tracksuit, rode a white electric car in downtown Puning, and he really couldn't see that he was nearly seven years old.
In this year, on this day and night, we saw that the inheritors of Puningying's singing and dancing represented by Chen Laifa are continuing to work hard to make the ancient Lingnan heritage continue to enter the lives of more people with a young attitude and move towards a broader world.
【Art Talk】
The longevity of Yingge requires everyone's joint efforts
Yangcheng Evening News: In the past, there was a tradition of "passing on the inside but not the outside, and the men but not the women", but this year it has changed, what do you think?
Chen Laifa: Many villages in the Chaoshan area live by ethnic groups with the same surname, and there are also many ancestral halls with the same surname. This strong clan concept makes the English song and dance have the rule of "passing on the inside but not the outside, and the man but not the woman" in the inheritance.
This year's opening of teaching is mainly due to the fact that the inheritance of English singing and dancing has begun to be in disarray. Nowadays, most of the people who dance Yingge are hobbies, and they all have their own jobs, and if they don't want to learn it, they can quit at any time.
In the past three years, there are only about 20 mature team members left, and even if the first batch of students trained by "Yingge into Campus" in 2017 are included, it is not enough. We have to think about how to make the British song and dance last forever.
In addition, after the British song and dance "became popular" this year, many dance schools from other provinces made a special trip to exchange. At that time, I thought that I wanted to be able to let the students from other places learn the actual content. In order to ensure the continuation of English singing and dancing, I feel that it is necessary to let go of teaching. In fact, even if you don't let go of teaching, now that short videos are spreading so widely and quickly, people can still learn Xi on their mobile phones.
Yangcheng Evening News: "Hour Move" was only more than 5 years old when he came out of the circle, why can he take the leading role when he is young?
Chen Laifa: The Nanshan Yingge Team has two "time shifts", one large and one small. There was no precedent before that. Of course, I don't set up a role out of thin air, I hope that the inheritance of English singing and dancing can be done well with the big with the small, and the old with the new.
"Little Snake" Chen Kaiming is already a member of their family's fourth-generation English song team. When my great-grandfather performed English singing and dancing, I was still singing a small opera in the back booth of the British song team, and we used to perform on the same stage; his father, Chen Hengqin, is now the "black-bearded Li Kui" in the team. Kaiming follows his father to train in the team every day, and I thought, let's just let him go into battle together. I didn't expect the effect to be quite good, and a little bit took the lead in a group of "Liangshan heroes", and it became popular.
In fact, brain drain is a big problem that has affected the inheritance of British singing and dancing in recent years. According to the old rules, the Yingge team can only let adult members play. But I think that in order to carry forward the English song and dance, the little dancers can also join the team. Nowadays, there are many 14 and 15-year-old children in the team, who were trained by the "Yingge into the campus" back then, and they have grown up very quickly.
The original article was published in the A07 edition of Yangcheng Evening News on January 2, 2024
Text | Reporter Zhou Xinyi, Zhu Shaojie, video | Peng Haoming, Qi Rongyuan, Chen Xianyu, Peng Zexiang, Tang Derong, Lin Dandan, Ji Qing, Li Kexuan (Xi)
Producer: Du Chuangui Lin Haili
Curator: Sun Aiqun, Chen Qiaosheng
Producer: Deng Qiong, Jiang Zheng, Wu Xiaopan
Co-ordinator: Zhu Shaojie He Ben
Executive: Zhou Xinyi, Peng Haoming, Wen Yi, Huang Zhouhui, Sun Lei
Poster design: Tang Xinyi