Source: Jinyun
Intangible cultural heritage, how to find the next generation of inheritors, how to win the love of young people, is a problem faced by many intangible cultural heritage, in this context, the municipal intangible cultural heritage Yangcun Sixth Street Jing'an stilts in Wuqing District, Tianjin appear unique. Its enthusiasts, performers, are young people with an average age of 30+. In this era of chasing dramas, online games, and social networks, this group of young people once again danced the long-dormant Jing'an stilts on the banks of the Grand Canal, playing the characters in the opera, enjoying the joy of gongs and drums, and gradually recovering the former style of Jing'an stilts.
In 1978, a group photo of the Jing'an stilt team on Yangcun Sixth Street
Old legs rummaged out of the warehouse
Around 2008, Yangcun Sixth Street was evacuated to build a village, the village brigade cleaned up the old things, turned out some old wood, the workers were going to pull these wood away as firewood, just passing by the villager Ma Ruipeng recognized at a glance, these old wood is actually stilt legs, he has no way to leave all the stilt legs, can only pick two pairs to take home. From the moment he touched these wooden legs, the gongs and drums that had been sealed in his childhood memories sounded again.
Stilt legs, mini legs for children in the front row
In the old days, there were ten streets in Yangcun Town, and every two streets had a flower party team, of which the stilt club accounted for 3, and there were car clubs, lion clubs, and the flower show during the New Year's festival was the highlight of the town's entertainment life. Later, he began to search for the origin of stilts, and Ma Ruipeng heard from the old gentleman that stilts were transmitted to Wuqing with the canal in the last years of Guangxu, and have a history of more than 100 years. The location of the 6th Street was originally Caoyun Wharf, and there are many shops, which is very prosperous. During the New Year's Festival, the stilt performance enlivens the atmosphere, drives the flow of customers, and the actors go to the shops to send auspicious words and lip color, and the shops are profitable and happy to reward, which provides a good environment for the development of the stilts on the sixth street.
Ma Ruipeng was born in 1989, when he was young, there were a lot of flower performances in Wuqing, where there was a performance, Ma Ruipeng chased where to watch, he liked stilts the most, liked to see the appearance of those characters, and preferred to watch hard kung fu performances. By the time he was a teenager, it was difficult to see stilt performances in the district anymore, and he disappeared completely.
Ma Ruipeng
Ma Ruipeng likes stilts, but has never had the opportunity to really get in touch with them, which is a regret of his childhood. After regaining these stilt legs, Ma Ruipeng came up with the idea of reorganizing the stilt team.
Young and old "play" together
Ma Ruipeng began to ask who would step on stilts from the side, and this question found out that the old people of the Sixth Street stilt team were these old neighbors who lived in front of the house and behind the house, after the team disbanded the stilt team, the old people worked as farmers, and no one mentioned the year, but after nearly 20 years, when someone asked about stilts, the old people could not hide their excitement. "Anyone who asks is very willing to say and teach." Ma Ruipeng said that the old people not only have a positive attitude, but also use practical actions to support Ma Ruipeng's revival of Jing'an stilts, "the fourth generation of Jing'an stilts intangible cultural heritage inheritors Ma Xiangming and Ma Xiang have already paid for wood, Zhao Shuyu, Zhao Jianyu, Wang Jinyou and others will carpenter, volunteer to work, these people are sixty or seventy years old, are our grandfathers, they helped us play the first batch of new legs, about 80 pairs." ”
Do stilt legs to use sand high wood, this wood has toughness, there is a buffer when broken, the construction site often uses this kind of wood to build scaffolding, and this wood is light, a leg of 1.2 meters, weighing 3 catties, elm can also be made of stilt legs, but one weighs 10 catties, and the dance is not flexible enough.
At first, only a few people were willing to practice with Ma Ruipeng, and when the weather was good, they would find an open space outdoors and walk around with their legs tied. The exercise attracted a large number of onlookers and attracted more new members. Ma Ruipeng has no requirements for those who join, as long as he wants to join, he welcomes them, and the number of stilt teams reaches fifty or sixty at the most.
At that time, no one thought about what the future would hold, and everyone called the practice "playing together". The members of the Jing'an Stilt Team are basically children of Sixth Street, similar in age to Ma Ruipeng, many of them have witnessed the glory of Sixth Street Stilts as children, for them, stilts are a game back to their childhood, so that they can feel the purest happiness.
When he re-emerged, the old man burst into tears
Zhao Junfeng, the third-generation inheritor of intangible cultural heritage, told Ma Ruipeng that the characters performed by Jing'an stilts came from "Mixed Yuan Box", which was a script of gods and demons in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, and later derived from dramas. There are a total of 6 pairs of 12 characters on the stilts, half male and half female, respectively, the head monk, the woodcutter, the fisherman, the son, etc. Since the fourth generation of inheritors, the roles of widows, boys, fools, mothers and sons have been added, and now the Jing'an stilt team has a total of 16 characters, plus 4 gongs and drums, with a total of 20 people in a team. During the performance, 8 pairs of characters appeared on the stage, and after the performance, they went on the stage as a whole, performing two dragons spitting fish, double dragons swinging tails, running Luo Cheng, cabbage hearts, eight-character flower fields, wearing flower fences, full houses and other doors, and finally ending the performance with a pack elephant and a broken bridge.
The 16 characters have different appearances and techniques, and after the team began to take shape, Ma Ruipeng invited the old people of the former stilt team to give one-on-one lessons to the young people. Looking at the old people's moves, Ma Ruipeng was amazed, "No wonder Jing'an stilts have always been famous in Wuqing, these old men still dance better than us now." ”
In 1978, most of the flower festivals in Yangcun were restored one after another, and in the 80s of the last century, Jing'an stilts on Yangcun 6th Street won the second place in the Tianjin Municipal Flower Festival rehearsal. The old people recalled that when the team organized a jumping meeting, more than 200 people in the whole team had to try to see if they could be selected for the stilt team, and the selected stilt team could earn work points and improve the food, "I heard the old people say that in the big field, more than 200 people were screened one by one, and their figures were eliminated if they were a little unsightly, and only 20 people were left in the end." Everyone is a peasant, and they can't talk about literary and artistic skills, but those who can stay are people with some artistic talents, who have their own understanding of the performance of the characters, and they also have real kung fu. The brigade is also willing to invest in the stilt team, and the costumes purchased decades ago are all hand-embroidered silk, and they are very eye-catching. ”
Old photos of performances from the 80s of the last century
Group photo of the stilt team in the 80s of the last century
Because Ma Ruipeng's stilt team is spontaneously joined, so the mobility of personnel is larger, and because of various external reasons, the first few years of the stilt team's practice are intermittent, from 2013, the stilt team's practice has basically stabilized, around 2014, the stilt team began to perform.
In the fifties and sixties of the last century, old photos of performances were performed in Jing'an Stilt Village
In the fifties and sixties of the last century, old photos of Jing'an stilt performances
The Jing'an stilts, which had disappeared for nearly 30 years, came back, and the news spread far and wide, and there were many onlookers wherever the stilt team went. Impressed by the stilt team is not only the enthusiasm of the villagers, but also the deep feelings of many old people for the art of stilts, the stilt team once saw an old man in a wheelchair during the performance in the lower village, the old man heard the sound of gongs and drums and strongly asked his family to push him out, he held the hands of the actors and tears rained down, he thought that he would never see stilts again in his lifetime. At that moment, Ma Ruipeng felt that he had done the right thing, and Jing'an stilts could not be broken.
Everyone's love and dedication
The Jing'an stilt team is still a loosely organized, all-voluntary mass organization, everyone is here because of love, it is the dedication of many people, so that this stilt team from "play" to the district intangible cultural heritage, and then to the city intangible cultural heritage.
Jing'an stilts were selected as the intangible cultural heritage of the district
Jing'an stilts are handsome, and the actors are sketching theatrical faces when they go out of the meeting. "Now we will make up Li Xuemin and her apprentices of Wuqing Xiaoxiaobaihua Troupe, Li Xuemin is over 70 years old this year, every time we 16 people even slap the face with a pan head for five or six hours, the morning performance has to get up in the early morning to make up, but the makeup is good-looking, we have met with other stilt teams, put together for comparison, and make a judgment." Ma Ruipeng said.
Every time there is a meeting, the masters will spontaneously follow, watch the apprentices' performances on the field, and continue to guide and improve off the field. With the efforts of many parties, the fame of the Sixth Street Jing'an Stilts is getting bigger and bigger, and various performances are constantly invited, and when the intangible cultural heritage has not yet been evaluated, the Sixth Street Jing'an Stilts were invited to perform at the Intangible Cultural Heritage Day activities in Wuqing District.
It's a pity that the stilt team can't go too far, there are performances in Xi'an and Shanghai, Ma Ruipeng can only push it off, "The old people are not in good health, and the people in the team can't take too long of leave, the members of our team have small traders, cooks, stevedores, anyway, there are all walks of life, and everyone participates in the performance at the time of dismantling." ”
Gao Jinming jumped the widow in the stilt team, and his parents had opposed him to joining, "I have to wrestle to practice stilts, but I have two serious falls, one broke my arm, and I couldn't do anything for 3 months, and once I fell and broke my heart, and I almost didn't come over, so my parents were against me jumping, knowing that I was going to practice, my dad chased me out directly." But now they all agreed, because my dad had seen me come out. ”
In 2020, when Jing'an stilts were rated as an intangible cultural heritage project in Wuqing District, Ma Ruipeng was elected as the inheritor of intangible cultural heritage.
In November 2021, the list of the fifth batch of municipal intangible cultural heritage representative projects in Tianjin was announced, and the Jing'an Stilt Club of Yangcun Sixth Street was selected. Next, Ma Ruipeng is also ready to do some sorting and excavation work, so as to record and protect the history and techniques of Jing'an stilts. The Spring Festival is coming, the stilt team is going to be busy again, the meeting is the most important thing for Ma Ruipeng, the art of stilts comes from the folk, more than 100 years ago, Jing'an stilts because of bringing joy to the masses and loved by the masses, and the development and prosperity, at the moment, continue to enrich the cultural life of the masses, continue to become a popular folk art form for the masses, for everyone to create a festive and peaceful festival atmosphere, this is the most vivid and permanent vitality of Jing'an stilts.
(Jinyun News reporter Peng Junyong)