A show of fighting spirit
Performers take 300-year-old warriors’ dance to Europe for the first time as part of UK’s Chinese festivities, report Zheng Wanyin and Wang Linyan in London.
For more than a month, Chen Jinxiang, a villager from Puning, a city in South China’s Guangdong province, had been living a life like the fictional Clark Kent: working by day — in this case as the owner of an online clothes shop — and becoming a hero when needed.
But Chen was no superhero and adopted his hero persona for entertainment, along with other dancers in his troupe who practiced traditional Chinese Puning Yingge folk dance for an upcoming trip to London in February.
The dance, a national intangible cultural heritage in China, dates back to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and is considered a dance of heroic warriors due to its close association with the classic novel about Chinese heroism called Water Margin.
Through its combination of opera, acrobatic dance, and martial arts, it retells the stories of good suppressing evil.
Performers wear opera-style facial makeup in diverse colors and patterns that reveal the personalities of the characters they are portraying. And with a pair of short batons in hand, they jump, swing, and hit the sticks together while walking and dancing, all to the resounding beat of drums, gongs, and shouts.
Since January, Chen and 15 other selected dancers had been working by day and training by night for a series of performances at landmarks in London.
It was the first time the dance had been seen in person anywhere in Europe.
All the 16 performers taking part in the United Kingdom tour hail from Nanshan Yingge dance team, one of the most exceptional Yingge dance troupes in China. Nanshan is a village in Puning.
On Feb 10, the squad, under the direction of the Guangdong Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism with support from the cultural section of China’s embassy in the UK, took center stage at London’s Burlington Arcade, to mark the start of the Year of the Dragon. The performance was part of a series of activities hosted by the shopping gallery to herald Spring Festival.
On the day, as the spectacle unfolded in the long hallway, crowds flocked to see what was happening, holding mobile phones aloft to film and take photos of the excitement and immersing themselves in the thundering sound and explosion of color.
“The performance is electrifying. I feel like it has woken up everybody in the arcade,” says Trupti Shah, Burlington Arcade’s commercial director.
Mark Lord, the arcade’s head beadle, jokes that Europe has patiently waited to catch its first glimpse of the Puning Yingge dance.
“We’ve waited more than 300 years for the dance troupe to leave China and come and perform in Europe,” he says.
“I have to say, it was well worth the wait. It has been fantastic.”
Because the gestures, moves and steps of the dance are designed to evoke the fighting spirit of heroes, it is seen as a symbol of good prevailing over evil and of bringing peace, making it a popular dance at traditional Chinese festivals, says Chen Laifa, a nationally recognized inheritor of Puning Yingge dance, who is also the leader and trainer of Nanshan Yingge dance team.
“We would like to convey this spirit to the British people, and at the same time, promote our own culture,” he says.
The 68-year-old is a ninth-generation inheritor of the dance, who has been dedicated to performing and promoting it ever since he joined the team aged 18.
On Feb 11, the warrior dance amazed London again as it was performed at a Chinese New Year parade and a grand celebration in Trafalgar Square at the invitation of the London Chinatown Chinese Association. The New Year celebration in the prestigious square in the UK capital is said to be the largest such event outside Asia, with more than 700,000 people in attendance.
Maintaining such a powerful cultural heritage requires efforts from every generation and, during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), Nanshan Yingge team formed an inheritance custom in which the craft would be passed on from fathers to sons, and from masters to apprentices, according to the local government of Puning.
Chen Laifa, however, says the traditional practice has, in recent years, restricted the preservation of the dance. “How can we carry forward the heritage, if there are not enough people proficient in the skills,” he says.
The folk dance is demanding with fast-paced moves. “As the dance can be physically consuming, you can’t keep dancing as you get older. There is an age limit,” reveals Chen Jinxiang, who started learning the dance when he was 5 years old.
At 30, he is the oldest among the London squad and considered “old” for a Yingge dancer, with most of the visiting team members aged between 25 and 28.
Participation from young dancers is welcomed. Since 2017, Chen Laifa has assisted Nanshan Primary School in setting up and running a voluntary Yingge dance-learning program, and gifted students are included in his team. While the delegation to London performed in the UK on Feb 11, the junior troupe, which has grown into a group of qualified dancers, also took over in downtown Puning.
Chen Laifa says Nanshan Yingge troupe has also taken the bold move this year of including more female performers, finally abandoning the ancient, unbending male-only rule.
The most important thing dancers need is the commitment to learning and performing the dance, and to bringing heartfelt passion to the dance, Chen Laifa says.
“If you love it, you can persist in doing it. If you don’t, you can’t hold on to it.”
Just like Chen Jinxiang, many members of the dance team are not full-time performers but ordinary villagers who make their living by doing a wide range of jobs, including managing small businesses, Chen Laifa says.
He notes that it is their genuine affection for the timeless tradition that makes them who they are today.
Hard work and dedication have been keeping Puning Yingge dance vibrant in China for centuries, and now the troupe’s efforts have captivated overseas audiences. As the dancers took their final bow at Burlington Arcade and in Trafalgar Square, enthusiastic applause from the audiences echoed.
“Having the opportunity to perform in London is a testament to not just the charm of Chinese traditional culture, but also the enduring power of cultural exchanges,” says Wu Chen, chief of the intangible cultural heritage section of the Guangdong Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism.