Fogang Lion Dance

Guangdong
🎧  Listen to Introduction

"Dancing with a blanket lion" is a traditional folk cultural activity that the Liu family of Weizhen Village, Tangtang Town, Fogang County, has formed in their long-term farming life customs, with the content of entertaining gods and people. The ancestors of the Liu family of Fogang migrated south in 1131 AD, and then moved from Zhuji Lane in Nanxiong to Daliang and Conghua in Guangzhou, and then moved from Conghua to Wangtian in Shuitou, Fogang and Kewang in Shijiao. It has been 855 years since then. From the ancestor of Longpan, Conglong Gong, to the current Guang generation, there have been 27 generations (excerpted from the "Liu Family Tree"). "Dancing with a blanket lion" is the most exciting and unique folk activity in the Lantern Festival lighting custom of the Liu family. According to the inheritor Deng Shuxiang (83 years old this year), this activity originated in the late Qing Dynasty. It was because the ancestor Pu Zhenggong mistakenly moved the remains of his grandmother to the "Lion Listening to Drum" in the lotus pond on the back mountain. Therefore, the women in the village danced the lion and prayed for the grandmother to bless their descendants with children and wealth. Originally, the surname Liu was not a big surname in the village. After the lion dance, the surname Liu developed rapidly. Now there is only one surname Liu in Weizhen Village. The lion dance has been passed down to this day and has a history of more than 200 years. It was banned during the Cultural Revolution, but it began to rise again after the reform and opening up. The lion dance is usually led by the older women in the village. In the past, it was led by Huang Weixian (died in 1990 at the age of 92), and now it is organized by Deng Shuxiang, Liu Yanbo and others. The main participants in this activity are women from families who have given birth to boys or married daughters-in-law that year. Generally, the mother-in-law dances the lion head (with a red belt tied around the waist), and the lion tail can be danced by other women, and families who have given birth to girls can also dance the lion tail. The quilts used in the quilt lion dance are brought by the families who have added a new child or married a daughter-in-law. They are all new and unused single sheets, and are kept by the mother-in-law of the family. After the dance, the quilt cover is used to cover the child, which means the birth of a son. The quilt lion dance activity starts every year on the sixth day of the first lunar month when the lanterns are lit. On the fifteenth and sixteenth day of the first lunar month, the quilt lion dance is performed in the families who have added a new child or married a new daughter-in-law in the previous year. After 2:30 p.m. on the sixteenth day of the first lunar month, the families who have added a child or married a daughter-in-law in the village carry firewood and arrange them in the shape of a dragon at the entrance of the ancestral hall, light a bonfire and start the quilt lion dance. For this reason, the Southern Daily once reported that the quilt lion dance is the "century-old women's carnival."

Intangible culture related to the heritage

China tourist attractions related to the heritage