Pudong Dragon Lantern Festival

Shanghai
🎧  Listen to Introduction

Dragon dance is one of my country's traditional sports. It is also commonly known as "circling the dragon lantern" in Pudong. Dragon dance originated from the traditional dance in the rice-growing cultural area of my country. Now the dragon dance culture has spread all over China, and has spread to all parts of the world with the Chinese immigrants, becoming a symbol of Chinese culture. During festive occasions, especially during the Lantern Festival, many places have the custom of dragon dance. When dancing the dragon, the dragon follows the hydrangea to do various movements, or leap, or roll, or coil, or interweave, constantly showing twisting, waving, looking up, kneeling, jumping, shaking and other postures. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, various towns and villages in Shanghai held various large-scale dragon dance performances during various festivals. Pudong's dragon dance teams are mainly distributed in various villages, clans and some trades. The most famous one is the dragon dance team composed of a group of "tiaoxingkou" gangs (i.e., porters and loading and unloading workers) in Sanlin Town. In the subsequent development process, dragon dance gradually shifted from street performance to square performance, from self-entertainment to professionalism, from randomness to regularity, and combined with other folk dances such as lion dance, cloud dance, drum dance, etc., which greatly improved the artistic level and appreciation of dragon dance. In 1994, the State Sports Commission established the Dragon and Lion Dance Association, and dragon dance was officially listed as a competitive event, which made traditional dragon dance go from self-entertainment to standardized, competitive and internationalized. Dragon dance competition integrates the beautiful body language of dance art, the steps of opera, the spirit and charm of martial arts, and the leaps and tumbles of skills into the skills of dragon dance, completing various difficult and beautiful movements, forming the characteristics of "Shanghai style dragon dance", and opening up a new world for modern dragon dance. At present, it has become a brand in the dragon and lion industry in China and even the world.

Intangible culture related to the heritage

China tourist attractions related to the heritage