Huizhou: carry the bench and dance the long dragon
2023-02-13
The mouth is wide, the eyes are bright, and the scales are flying. During the Lantern Festival, the dragon head is carried out from the ancestral hall in the village, and the board of the dragon body comes from all households. "Catch the dragon!" shouted a loud voice. The benches were pieced together and connected end to end. The body of the dragon was longer and longer, and the villagers gathered more and more. When night fell, the candle light flickered, 76 boards were connected, 88 people cruised through, and Huizhou benches were dancing. The highlight is that the dragon body accelerates the dance step, the dragon head rises high, and circles towards the center. All around, the sound of gongs and drums, shouts and cheers rose one after another. Dancing the bench dragon during the Spring Festival is an "urgent matter" for villagers in Youlong Village, Hecheng Town, Xiuning County, Anhui Province. Huizhou has been a place with few mountains since ancient times. In the past, floods and droughts occurred frequently. It has become a tradition to dance dragons to pray for good weather on the Lantern Festival. According to legend, more than 500 years ago, the villagers of Youlong Village carved bamboo and bamboo strips, made dragon heads and tails, cut trees and saw boards, and spliced and polished the dragon body. Both ends of the bench are chiseled with round holes, wooden handles and perforated connections. A bench and three lanterns. The first bench dragon was born during the Lantern Festival. The bench dragon is composed of three parts: the dragon head fixed on the board, the dragon tail and the board dragon body. The faucet weighs about 60 kg, with a built-in candle light, which can be carried by five people. The dragon body can be long or short, depending on the number of villagers participating in the dragon dance. There are also lantern holders and gongs and drums in the dragon dance team. The former is responsible for guiding the direction, and the gongs and drums are responsible for controlling the rhythm. In Huizhou dialect, "lamp" and "Ding" are homophones, and the red lantern means "people are thriving". The villagers celebrated the harvest of grain by dancing the bench dragon and prayed for the prosperity of Min'an Village in the coming year. From the leader of the bench dragon, to the lampholder during the dragon dance, to the craftsman who made the dragon tail, Huizhou bench dragon has four generations of inheritors. Zhang Guangwu, secretary of the General Party Branch of Youlong Village, is one of them. With a skillful tie of bamboo strips, the dragon's head and tail have been formed, and painted with colored paper, the dragon's eye and beard are vivid. It is the Lantern Festival again. Zhang Guangwu, the lampholder, is busy. "This Spring Festival, the county organized four traditional folk performing teams to tour the city, and we were lucky to be selected." Zhang Guangwu kept cutting and introducing. A few years ago, the bench dragon only danced in the village, and now it is on the county stage. Hearing the news, students as young as adults and old people as old as 68 years old, villagers scrambled to sign up, get red paper, make lanterns, take out benches, and rehearse repeatedly. These days, the No. 1 Scholar Square in Xiuning County is full of tourists and crowds. Every day, citizens wait here with their children in the morning. "We came from the city and queued up an hour in advance, and then we got to the front row." Watching the dragon passing in front of us, the audience Xue Bing excitedly said that he had not seen such a lively scene for a long time. At the same time, her son couldn't help clapping his eyes. Such a popular bench dragon has also been interrupted. In 2005, Zhang Guangwu asked the village elders for advice. After more than one month, he restored the dragon tail, dance steps and routes that had been suspended for 18 years. Later, on the Lantern Festival, the villagers came back from work, cleaned the dust, tied the headband, tied the belt, and immediately became the protagonist of the dance bench dragon. Gathered like a fire, scattered like stars. During the dragon dance, benches come out from every household and form a long dragon; After the end of the show, the villagers came home with a piece of dragon and looked forward to the coming year. "Bench Dragon
Edit：qihang Responsible editor：xinglan
Source：People.cn
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