Bamboo-Leaf Dragon Dance in County of Bamboo Forests

May 8， 2010 was a special day for the Village of Shangshe in Kuntong Township of Anji， a rural county in northern Zhejiang. The weighty percussion music of gongs and drums put the quiet mountain village into a stage of dragon dance competitions. It was drizzling; dragon dance teams from all over Zhejiang metat the village and danced their special dragon dances.

The dragon teams gathered to celebrate the unveiling of Shangshe Dragon Dance Museum， the first of its kind in China. Shangshe Village hosts the museum because it was here that 100-leaf Dragon， now a national intangible cultural heritage， originated in this village. Also started in the village are Flower Dragon Lantern and Bamboo-Leaf Dragon Dance， both recognized as provincial intangible cultural heritage.

Lanterns and dragons came together probably in the Song Dynasty (960-1279). They came together as a solution to dragon dance after sunset. That is arguably how the phrase “dragon lantern” got first coined.

According to local annals， it was during the 1796 to 1820 reign of Emperor Jiaqing of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911)， that an old man surnamed Zhu in Shangshe Village first tried his hands at making dragon lanterns. With bamboo materials available， he constructed a dragon-shaped skeleton and covered it with colored paper. Flower-shaped and vase-shaped lanterns were created to serve as auxiliary props for the dragon dance. The local people called the performance Flower Dragon Lantern. During the 1821-1851 reign of Emperor Daoguang， Yang Jiuling and his brother Yang Maoqing， and another fellow villager Yang Hongshou introduced innovation to the dance. The trio re-choreographed the dance of flower baskets and lotus and carp lanterns so that they formed into a dragon themselves. The new move brought amazing changes to the dance. What audiences saw were arrays of lanterns in various shapes dancing in various forms in loud accompaniment of drums and gongs before all the flower lanterns suddenly moved to the edge revealing the dragon in the center. The three innovators called the new dance “dragon transformer”.

It was also in the Qing Dynasty that this new dance inspired a villager surnamed Yao， who came to visit his father-in-law in Shangshe Village during a Spring Festival and watched the dance and decided to try out some new ideas. After the visit， he talked with his friends in Tianpingqiao Village in the neighboring Changxing County. They made a dragon of cloth and made it covered with lotus flower petals. The dragon was an instant sensation and became a legend. Today， this is one of the most famous intangible cultural heritages in Huzhou and it is known as “Changxing 100-leaf dragon”.

Villagers in Shangshe were innovators too. After the original trio， the descendents of the Yang family took it upon themselves to make the dragon one generation after another. Yang Liuchun， the son of Yang Jiuling， replaced paper with cloth to make dragons. He named the new generation of dragon lanterns “Bamboo-Leaf Dragon”. For more than a century， villagers in Shangshe danced the lantern dragon. It has become unique and an annual celebration.

In ancient times， villagers celebrated the New Year with a dragon dance and then burned the dragon. They made a new dragon the next year. The technology of making the dragon was a family secret for decades. It was not until the founding of New China that Yang Liufang， a descendent of the original trio， decided to let fellow villagers learn the technology. Hu Qihua and Zhu Chenggao learned how to make the dragon from Yang Liuhua. Yang Liuhua passed away. Hu Qihua is already in his 70s in 2010. He explains that without Yang Liufang breaking the family tradition and teaching other villagers， the dragon would not have been known to the world.

Hu Qihua is a key person that has made the dragon in Shangshe come back. Twenty years ago he was just a village carpenter. No bamboo-leaf dragon had ever been made in Shangshe since the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). One day， he was chatting with people and someone asked why the dragon dance in Anji did not highlight any bamboo features of the county. Hu Qihua knew the answer. Anji used to have a dragon that had everything to do with bamboo. He decided to propose to get the traditional bamboo dragon back. He and his fellow dragon makers proposed to the government. Soon they got the government support and received a grant of 10，000 yuan. Hu Qihua made a bamboo-leaf dragon.

Hu Qihua has done more than bringing the bamboo-leaf dragon back. With the assistance of the local government， Hu in recent years organized a dragon transformers association and a folk art study club. The two organizations he heads study ways to improve the art of making dragon lanterns and the dragon dance.

In the early 2007， the dragon dance at the village transformed itself under the guidance of Hu. With the government grants， a stage was built up and the dance was choreographed again to be suitable for a stage presentation.

In June 2007， the bamboo-leaf dragon was inscribed on the list of intangible cultural heritages by the Zhejiang Provincial Government. In 2009， the villagers from Shangshe staged their bamboo-leaf dragon dance in Beijing and then in France.□