Inspired by a burst of cheerful gongs and drums, Hong Yanwu, who had had enough of wandering, finally found out that he had lost his way.
It brought the family back to the center of Ditan Park from a remote area where vendors gathered.
It's lucky to say that it's better to come early than to come by chance.
The Hong family just caught up with the new wave of Yangko and lion dance performances that had just started.
And they were particularly lucky to be in a corner, with a relatively front position.
You can watch it up close and fully feel the Spring Festival atmosphere brought by Yangko dance.
Otherwise, if we arrive later, when the inner and outer floors are full of people, we will only be able to see the backs of the people in front of us.
It has to be said that Yangko and lion dance, as the most attractive scenes at the Spring Festival temple fair, are the most essential traditional programs and can bring endless joy to people.
Just look, amid the unprecedented pomp and circumstance, and with the sound of gongs and drums resounding in the sky, a group of yangko performers walked towards us.
At the front are a dozen clowns riding paper donkeys.
Following the beat of the gongs and drums, Banyan takes three steps forward and two steps back, twisting and turning in a funny way, amusing the crowds on both sides.
Among the several clowns, the most eye-catching one is the one in the middle.
He also rides a paper donkey, but the difference is that he is a man disguised as a woman, disguised as a matchmaker.
The makeup on his face is festive and funny, and there is a black cloth band around his forehead, wide in front and narrow in back, tied under the fake bun on the back of his head.
The two black eyebrows are thick in front and thin in the back, high in the middle and low on both sides, forming an "eight" shape and extending to the temples.
Her cheeks were painted red, like a monkey's butt.
He had a fake smile on his face, and his movements were extremely exaggerated.
Behind "her" were two young men wearing white silk and satin clothes, with ribbons hanging from their waists to their calves, carrying a sedan.
The colorful sedan chair was open on all sides, and inside there was also a bride dressed as a woman, all dressed up.
This "she" would cover her face with a large flower handkerchief from time to time and then take it away, pretending to be shy, flashing it to the left and then to the right, making people burst into laughter.
But the donkey and the sedan chair are just the beginning. After the prologue of marrying a wife is over, what follows is the real high-level performance.
Because stilt dancing appears!
Needless to say, the first part must be the comedy "The Big-headed Monk Visits Liu Cui" which has not changed for thousands of years.
The male character wears a smiling "big-headed monk" mask, a green cloth gown, holding a wooden fish, and a folding fan inserted into the collar behind his neck.
The female character who is a man disguised as a woman has a cloud on her temples, flowers on her side, wearing a Caidan costume and holding a handkerchief.
One is shaking his head and looking very naive.
The other is graceful and graceful, pretending to be shy.
As we all know, this is the story of the willow branch in Guanyin's pure vase thinking about the lower world, and the big-headed monk was ordered to re-convert it.
Following closely behind, there are characters from other folk stories and myths such as "The Foolish Young Master Goes to Beijing", "The Fisherman and the Woodcutter and the Farmer Read the Music of the Four Seasons", "The Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea", "The Legend of the White Snake", "Journey to the West" and so on.
Without exception, these stilt dances are full of humor and humor under the bright rhythm, and they try their best to perform twisting, shaking, chasing, teasing and other technical movements.
That was really interesting.
But the most amazing creativity was when Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck kicked off the lion dance performance.
With the drum beat of "咚卟龙咚锵, 嚚卍龙咚锵, 嚚卍龙咚咚咚龙-".
Only a mouse and a duck, two homemade "foreign friends", appeared holding hydrangea.
Although they wore loose costumes, they still tried their best to make various poses.
Two tall and brave northern lions with long golden fur appeared.
Then the lion's eyes as big as copper bells shone with golden light, and it majestically rushed towards them with its mouth as big as a basin.
The mouse and duck fled in panic and returned the hydrangea to the real actor.
From this, as the audience burst into laughter, the hydrangea dancers began the real traditional lion dance.
Next, climb high and look into the distance, hold a hydrangea on your head, fold an Arhat, shake your head and lie down...
The highly difficult skills were performed one after another, and the eyes of the whole audience were fixed on the two northern lions that kept jumping, falling, turning, rolling and squatting.
The ball dancer kept turning somersaults, and the northern lion also kept rolling up and down.
The final ending is a pair of little lions jumping behind, very lively and cute.
I have to say that such a clever connection and such a wonderful performance are truly a unique combination of Chinese and Western.
Of course, thanks to the fact that our country has not yet joined the WTO, it is still in an era of indifferent copyright awareness.
Only then can such a wonderful combination of earth and ocean come about.
In short, the bursts of warm applause never stopped during the entire performance.
Not only did the children watch it with great satisfaction, but the adults also kept applauding.
But precisely because the performance was so exciting, right after the performance ended.
There were still many spectators who lingered and were reluctant to leave, strongly demanding that the lion dance team perform another performance.
As a result, this caused a small complication.
The Qingqing Lion Dance Troupe completely ignored everyone's additional demands, whether they were applauding, whistling, or booing.
When the performance is over, the performance is over. After bowing and thanking each other, it is time to clean up and leave the stage to rest.
This angered a group of young men in their twenties.
Especially the two arrogant ones, who deliberately made sarcastic remarks.
one shouted.
"Come on, let's go, what's the matter! Why don't you just act like a lion? It's boring! It's not like a real lion walking into a ring of fire. If you don't act, you won't act. We don't care about it anymore!"
The other one also yelled.
"Exactly, what kind of candy are you getting? Let me see, this lion's performance is just average. If you really have the ability, you have to dance the dragon. We are descendants of the Yanhuang people, the descendants of the dragon. That's enough energy..."
Okay, what is this called?
This is called being nice and cheap, this is called scolding the cook when you are full, this is called being deliberately vindictive.
The masters of the lion dance team have been practicing hard for a long time in the cold weather.
These days it is purely about serving the people.
How can I bear this?
So now a middle-aged lion dance master in the lion dance team quit the job on the spot.
Just look at this guy standing up, clasping his fists, glaring, talking to the two of them, and they started talking to each other reluctantly.
"Hey, you two, why are you so unheard? What about a lion walking in a ring of fire? What about a dragon dance? What do you think our stuff is?"
"I'm not saying that you two don't want to listen to this just because I don't want to perform it for you."
"Everyone knows that good people know people. If we want to act, we can't just show our charm to the blind, right? If we actually act, will you understand?"
Do you understand?
The two young men said it nonchalantly at that time.
"Tch, isn't it just a lion dance? Is there anything you can't understand?"
The lion dance master smiled coldly.
"What's there? It's much more sophisticated. Let's not say it's useless, let's just make a bet. Regarding the lion dance, I'm going to ask you a few common sense questions that even a child can understand. You need to be able to explain it to me.
, even if you win, we will put on a special performance for you to have fun. But if you can't tell us, then you have to apologize to us for the nonsense you just said. How about it? Is it a man? Do you dare? "
Hey, these two young men who are originally vindictive insects, how can they retreat in front of so many people?
So I agreed almost without thinking.
But this time it was really muddy.
Because even though the question asked by the master opposite was simple, they really couldn't answer it.
The first question is, why does the lion in the lion dance love to play with hydrangeas?
Who has ever seen a real lion play with a ball, not even a circus?
What's going on?
The second question is, why do our country’s traditional lions guard the door?
There are a pair of stone lions guarding the gates of temples and palaces, but in the real world there are never real lions guarding the gates.
What's going on?
To be honest, not to mention that the two young men suppressed their blushes and neither of them had a word to say.
Even the lively audience couldn't answer it.
And it must be said that these two questions really aroused everyone's curiosity.
So with everyone's unanimous support, the two young men had to apologize.
The master finally answered the big guy's call and solved the mystery on the spot.
"Everyone, it's actually very easy to pierce this layer of window paper. I'm not exaggerating. Even a child can figure it out."
As he said this, the lion dance master asked the child nearest him with a smile.
"Children, do you know which animal likes to watch your house and play with a ball?"
Just like that, a scene that resembled the emperor's new clothes appeared.
The child bit his finger and thought about it for a moment, then quickly answered the question.
"dog……"
"Haha, smart, right answer!"
As the master praised with a thumbs up, the audience became an unprecedented commotion because no one could believe such an answer.
A lion is a dog? Are you talking nonsense? How is that possible?
Hey, this is actually true.
As the master clasped his fists and punched him amidst the noise at the scene, he shook out his authentic folklore knowledge, which opened everyone's eyes and made them more knowledgeable.
I bet this lion dance is really not simple.
According to him, the origin of the Northern Lion was in the Northern Wei Dynasty.
The Southern Lion was introduced from the north during the Tang and Song Dynasties. Historically, it was much later in the day.
And because there is no such thing as "lion" in our native culture.
Therefore, the word "lion" was brought to the Central Plains precisely because of the rise of Buddhism in the Northern Wei Dynasty.
In fact, it originally refers to the mythical beast in Buddhism that is responsible for guarding gates.
Many people have heard of the phrase "gold-haired lion and blue-haired cat".
Both of these animals are also fictional Buddhist mythical beasts and have no real prototypes.
But if there is no such thing in the world and we have to create an image, what should we do?
Our craftsmen combined the image of the pug sent as tribute from Sri Lanka and then imagined it, just like our unicorn and dragon, to create this "lion".
Later, after the Mongolian baptism of the Yuan Dynasty, the image of the "lion" became more rough and realistic.
This is why our country’s traditional lions are majestic and cute at the same time.
He knows how to play ball, he knows how to keep goal, and there is even a reason for the little lion to follow him.
To put it bluntly, its prototype is a pug and has nothing to do with African lions.
The reason why the modern concept of lion was formed.
In fact, it is because some people feel that the image is very powerful after seeing this real beast with their own eyes.
It is only then that the result is far-fetched and extrapolated to our traditional image of the lion.
Otherwise, we might not know what we would call this African lion.
One after the other, this kind of causal relationship cannot be mistaken.
Finally, one thing needs to be made clear.
The origin of lion dance is a Buddhist activity.
The dragon dance is a sacrificial totem that originated from the folk praying for rain in the Dragon King Temple.
In terms of level and theory, lion dance is higher than dragon dance.
All temple fairs must have a lion dance, but except for praying for rain at the Dragon King Temple, there is no dragon lantern dance.
As for Beijing, it is even more special.
Because there has always been an emperor here, it has always been forbidden to perform the dragon dance even to pray for rain, as that would be beheading.
At this point, there was not only laughter, but also applause.
Even two young men who thought they had lost face gave them thumbs up.
Because the lion has so many origins narrated by the master, it is as wonderful as a real performance.
Not only were they fascinated by it, they were no longer ashamed of their ignorance.
On the contrary, I feel that I have something in my heart and can show it off to others.
Can you be unhappy then?
But to be honest, among all the people present, Hong Yanwu was the one who was most emotionally touched.
This was not for anything else, but because he actually knew the lion dance master who was talking about it.
That was Liu Songshan of the Baizhifang Paper Factory who wanted to kill him in those special years.
He even discovered that the person playing with the lion's tail behind Liu Songshan was his son "Huozi".
Looking at this father and son who were famous for ruthlessly killing the weak in special years, now they have turned their interest in beating and humiliating people to the skills of entertaining people.
He turned out to be a real lion dance expert.
Can Hong Yanwu not be filled with emotion?
This is the progress of the times.
A good era is one that can resolve the evil thoughts of people and make life better and better.