Hubei Daily all-media reporter Zhang Quan, Cai Jun, correspondent Xiang Xianghui
The drums are beating and the gongs are sounding. On April 20th, Laifeng County held a special intangible cultural heritage parade of "Cultural Memory Intangible Cultural Heritage", and intangible cultural heritage items such as Tujia hand-waving dance were staged one by one, and the passionate drums and heroic dancing postures stirred up the entire county.
The hand-waving dance is a traditional dance of the Tujia people and one of the most distinctive cultural symbols of the Tujia people, and was included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage in 2008. For a long time, Laifeng County has vigorously promoted the inheritance and protection of the hand-waving dance, and has constantly brought forth the new, so that this ancient folk art can be "placed" from the remote mountain town to the world stage.
The thousand-year-old "Sheba" walked out of the mountains
The sons and daughters of the Tujia family wore colorful national costumes and danced the Tujia hand dance. (Photo by Hubei Daily all-media reporter Cai Jun)
The hand-waving dance, called "Sheba" in Tujia language, is a traditional dance of the Tujia family in the Youshui Basin of the Hunan-Chongqing border area, which has a history of more than 1,200 years.
The hand-waving dance moves are rough and toned, and the posture is smooth, natural and generous. Its main dance movements mainly include grinding eagles and spreading their wings, drawing bows and archery, digging soil and sowing seeds, spinning cotton and weaving, planting rice and carrying water, etc., more than 10 kinds, the characteristics of the movements are "crutches, knees, trembling, sinking", throwing the same side hand, walking the same side foot is the most important feature that distinguishes it from other dances. In the meantime, there are gongs and drums accompaniment and hand-waving songs, which is a folk art that integrates singing, music and dance.
According to historical records, the hand-waving dance first originated from the military war dance of the Ba people in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, and was popular in the Ming and Qing dynasties. There is such a poem in the Qing Dynasty's "Xizhou Bamboo Branches": "The brocade in the Fushi City is a nest, the water is growing on the side of the Tuwang Palace, the red lights are thousands of people, and there is a lingering song." It depicts the pomp and circumstance of the Tujia people when they worship their ancestors and celebrate the harvest.
Shemihu Village, Baifusi Town, Laifeng County, is one of the birthplaces of the original Tujia hand-waving dance. In this small mountain village deep in the mountains, there is still the oldest hand-waving hall of the Tujia family. "Shemi Lake" is the Tujia language, which means "the sunny hillside", the whole village gathers on the sunny hillside on one side, there are 182 households and 685 people, all of whom are surnamed Peng with the same root and ancestor, the folk customs are simple, do not gamble, only good to wave and dance.
Peng Nanqing, secretary of the party branch of Shemihu Village, said that everyone in the village, from the elderly to the drooping children, can dance with their hands. Every festive festival, men, women and children of Shemihu Village gather in the hand-waving hall, putting up lanterns and dancing hand-waving dance.
On January 15, 1957, Pan Guangdan, a professor at Minzu University of China, went to the Hubei-Chongqing border area for research, and was shocked after watching the hand-waving dance performed by five members of Peng's ancestors and grandchildren.
The sons and daughters of the Tujia family wore colorful national costumes and danced the Tujia hand dance. (Photo by Hubei Daily all-media reporter Cai Jun)
This unexpected encounter changed the fate of the Tujia family and the hand-waving dance. In December 1957, the state officially recognized the "Tujia" as a single ethnic minority, and the hand-waving dance, as the most important symbolic cultural form of the Tujia family, provided valuable empirical evidence for the identification work.
In that year, the hand-waving dance of Shemihu Village was performed for the first time in the Hubei Theater, and it became famous for a while, and Hunan, Sichuan and neighboring counties and cities in the province came to learn it. Since then, the hand-waving dance has re-spread in the Tujia gathering place.
From being on the verge of being lost to being on the world stage
The hand-waving dance is a great collection of traditional Tujia culture, which fully reflects the historical changes, agricultural work, and living customs of the Tujia family, and is the epitome of the production and life of the Tujia children.
"After the Republic of China, the hand-waving dance was basically extinct in most areas of the Tujia family in the Youshui Basin. Peng Nanqing, secretary of the Party branch of Shemihu Village, is the representative inheritor of the provincial intangible cultural heritage of the Tujia hand-waving dance, and he introduced that Shemihu Village has preserved the most original hand-waving dance, but it was on the verge of being lost in the sixties and seventies of the twentieth century.
The sons and daughters of the Tujia family wore colorful national costumes and danced the Tujia hand dance. (Photo by Hubei Daily all-media reporter Cai Jun)
In 1983, Peng Nanqing taught at the Hedong Township Ethnic Primary School and served as the leader of the literary and artistic propaganda team. In 2005, he served as the village party secretary in Xing'an Village, Baifusi Town, and set up the Xing'an Swinging Dance Team, organizing villagers to learn to dance in the slack time, forming a hand-waving dance team of more than 80 people, and often participated in some large-scale activities in the Hubei-Hunan-Chongqing border area.
Last year, the third Tujia Swing Dance Culture and Tourism Festival was held in Laifeng County, Peng Nanqing led 26 villagers to participate, they wore traditional black Tujia costumes, waved their hands, took steps, and showed the dance movements such as single pendulum, New Year's greetings, and sowing seeds to the fullest.
Villager Peng Chengjin is the representative inheritor of the national intangible cultural heritage of the Tujia hand-waving dance, and is also the famous "Tujia Drum King". He innovated in the accompaniment of gongs and drums, changing the single-beat accompaniment of the original clapping dance into a double beat, from one person playing gongs and drums to multiple sets of gongs and drums or even hundreds of sets of gongs and drums at the same time, creating a strong sound effect that shocks people's hearts.
Up to now, Laifeng County has 1 national inheritor of Tujia hand-waving dance, 1 provincial inheritor, 4 state-level inheritors and 38 county-level inheritors. Thanks to their efforts, in 2013, Tujia Swing Dance won the "Star Award", the highest honor of national mass culture, at the 9th China Arts Festival. Laifeng original ecological hand-waving dance team has been invited to participate in the National Square Dance Beijing Centralized Exhibition, the Chinese Farmers' Spring Festival Gala, the China Youth Art Week, and the opening ceremony of the Shanghai Tourism Festival. In November 2022, the Tujia hand-waving dance was included in the list of typical cases of the construction of the "Hometown of Chinese Folk Culture and Art" by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
"Living inheritance" is endless
On April 20, Laifeng County held a special intangible cultural heritage parade of "Cultural Memory Intangible Cultural Heritage Tour", and the villagers of Shemihu Village, Baifusi Town, danced the Tujia hand dance. (Photo by correspondent Tang Jun)
On April 20 this year, at the site of the "Cultural Memory Intangible Cultural Heritage Tour" characteristic intangible cultural heritage parade held in Laifeng County, the hand-waving dance and Puningying song and dance, Huangping Miao bench dance, Xuan'en playing, Xianfeng bamboo horse and other intangible cultural heritage items were on the same stage "fighting dance", which was wonderful.
The Tujia people are an ancient people with language but no writing, and the hand-waving dance is the "living soul" of the Tujia family, and only by deeply rooting the inheritance and protection of the hand-waving dance in the daily life of the masses can this ancient cultural treasure always maintain its vitality and vitality.
On April 20, Laifeng County held a special intangible cultural heritage parade of "Cultural Memory Intangible Cultural Heritage Tour", and the villagers of Shemihu Village, Baifusi Town, danced the Tujia hand dance. (Photo by correspondent Tang Jun)
In recent years, Laifeng County has implemented the Tujia hand-waving dance inheritance plan, and held the Tujia hand-waving dance cultural tourism festival for three consecutive years, forming a good atmosphere for everyone in the county to learn and love to dance. Baifusi Town invests more than 100,000 yuan every year to set up a national hand-waving dance teaching team, and goes into enterprises, schools, villages (communities), scenic spots, etc., to teach hand-waving dance, and has trained more than 3,000 students. Laifeng County Cultural Center convened staff, inheritors and dance teachers to set up a hand-waving dance teaching team, and regularly sent dancers to the countryside every month. Since last year, more than 30 hand-waving dance trainings have been carried out, and more than 4,800 people have been trained. The county also offers Tujia hand-waving dance cultural courses in primary and secondary schools to cultivate a fertile soil for the inheritance of this excellent traditional culture.
In order to better inherit and popularize the hand-waving dance, the Laifeng County Cultural and Tourism Department combines the hand-waving dance with modern literature and art, and integrates square dance elements and fashionable music beats in the movement choreography, gong and drum accompaniment, etc., so that the hand-waving dance can enter the daily life of the people.
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Source: Hubei Daily