Z generation?
——The post-00s lion girl is not as good as men,
Story protagonists: Wu Shuxian, Kuang Junyu, Zhong Ziying
Guangzhou Women's Lion Dance Team Member
The 5th Guangzhou Youth Lion Dance Show Competition
Group Lion Gold Award and the Strongest Drum Music Combination Award
On the stage, the suffrage, drinking, drunk lions, and dancing are vividly performed. As soon as the "Taoyuan Fellowship", the girls' faces appeared under the back of the red, yellow and black lions, and applause was constantly heard from the audience.
Three years ago, these lion dance girls were called to stop before the lion dance performance was about to begin. "I think it's unlucky for girls to dance lions and affect Feng Shui." "It's very uncomfortable and unwilling to give up." "The master told us to work harder and prove it to everyone." They are the female members of the Lion Dance Team of Hexingtang, Nanxingzhuang, Renhe Town, Baiyun District, Guangzhou.
was founded in the Hexingtang Lions Dance Team in the 1980s. It was not until 2019 that it formed its first all-woman Lions Dance Team. This women's lion dance team currently has 20 players and has won more than ten lion dance awards. In the 5th Guangzhou Youth Lion Dance Show Competition in December 2021, the girls successfully won the "Lion Gold Award" and the "Strongest Drum Music Combination Award". In July this year, they will also represent the Guangzhou Lion Dance Women's Team to participate in the Guangdong Provincial Lion Dance Competition.
They finally became dazzling existences in the Guangzhou women's lion dance team. "Breaking prejudice, girls can do it. More importantly, good friends who are standing side by side, friendship is powerful."
worship Guan Gong, and the master gave lectures to
6 lion dance girls "Yijie Jinlan"
lion dance, southern lion dance among Chinese lion dances. In 2006, Guangdong lion dance was included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage list with the approval of the State Council. To this day, lion waking is a traditional folk custom that is popular in many areas of Lingnan. Villages of all sizes often invite lion teams to perform during festivals, which means good luck and blessings.
As a master, Yu Weizhao burned incense to Guan Gong who was worshipped in the ancestral hall. Please ask Guan Gong to bless these girls who are about to join the lion dance team without being hurt and to train the girls to abide by Guan Gong's credibility and integrity - unity and integrity. Then, six young girls walked towards the Guan Gong statue together, bowed, burned incense and bowed, praying for a peaceful and smooth life in the lion team in the future.
According to local customs, after worshiping Guan Gong, the girls are official members of the lion dance team.
A lion head weighs 6 pounds
If you can’t move, just practice lifting the bench at home
0 The first lesson of joining the lion dance team is a year-long basic training. Horse stance, sit-ups, and 3-kilometer running account for three-quarters of their training time. Only by passing the coach's basic skills assessment can they begin to unlock skills and movements.
"Because classes are going to be held during the day, we only have time to concentrate on training at night and weekends."
. Less training time is not the biggest problem faced by female players. Poor foundation and physical fitness cannot keep up, resulting in slow training progress is the most difficult for them to overcome.
The girl Wu Shuxian, who works as a lion head, is now in the second year of junior high school at Baiyun No. 6 Middle School Experimental Middle School. Wu’s mother learned martial arts when she was young and was also a member of the Hexingtang lion team in Nanxingzhuang. After an accidental walk, I saw the Lions team training, Shuxian had the idea of joining the Lions team. With the support of my mother, I became the first member of the Hexingtang Women's Lion Dance Team.
"A lion's head weighs 6 kilograms. I just went to (when I was in the lion team), and I was the slowest and shortest. For me at that time, it was too difficult to complete the movement with a 6 kilogram head. I usually couldn't lift it for a minute." After returning home, Shuxian told her mother the bottleneck of the practice, and her mother asked her to hold the bench at home with both hands and practice for half an hour every day. "As soon as I got home, I held the bench to practice, and my mother stared at me to practice."
overcomes the problem of arm strength, and also overcomes the difficulty of holding the lion's head to practice difficult movements, such as rushing, moving, flashing, pounce, swinging, and flying. Each movement is a hard bone that is harder than chewing for Wu Shuxian, who has just entered junior high school.
Lion Head is one of the core of lion wake performance.The lion-head dancer needs to hold his head hood throughout the whole process and pay attention to grasping the lion's expression, which puts forward requirements for the performer's hand strength, coordination and understanding.
"Hahaha, I can only be a hard-working player." Wu Shuxian always feels that she doesn't have strong understanding. She has mastered the same set of steps and has not recorded it yet, and she can't grasp the angle of the step. After entering the lion dance team, she failed in the first test. "Seeing other team members learning new moves, I could only continue to practice the previous ones, and I felt a little disappointed."
so she couldn't remember the steps, so she spent more time practicing. Otherwise, I would like to ask other partners in the team to help practice. "They will teach me how to use force," Wu Shuxian sighed. It was precisely because of the help and company of her friends that she never thought of giving up in the process of learning to wake up the lion.
If the arm strength is not good, practice raising the bench. If the memory cannot keep up, train muscle memory. If the ten times fail, practice 100 times. This perseverance is not only vividly reflected in Wu Shuxian, but also her teammates are also sad.
fears height, climbing high pole while crying
keeps climbing until I overcome the fear of height
"Although I grow tall, I am really afraid of height. The first time I climbed a high pole, I could cry when I watched me below." But fear cannot be a reason to escape training, under the strict requirements of the coach and the cheering of my teammates, Zhong Ziying climbed onto the first high pole in her life.
"When I first climbed up, I cried with the pole in my arms. The coach below was still asking me to continue climbing up." But I couldn't drag everyone's training progress because of my weakness, so I could only climb the pole again and again and then practice the movements.
From the beginning, I cried climbing pole , Zhong Ziying has completely overcome the psychological barrier of fear of heights, and climbing the pole has become her favorite exercise. "Now I want to climb, the coach doesn't let me climb." Zhong Ziying laughed.
After practicing lion head, lion tail and drum music, Zhong Ziying chose the position of drummer and became the first female drummer in the first group of women's lion dance team.
What boys can do
We can also do
Kuang Junyu serves as the lion tail in the performance. Compared with boys, girls are often less powerful, and it is more difficult to perform actions that require greater strength such as lifting. But Kwong Junyu doesn't think this can stump the girls. In fact, she and her partner Wu Shuxian have mastered the difficulty movements and want to challenge the more difficult "shoulder" next.
"Standing shoulder", the lion dancer needs to stand on the shoulder of the lion dancer. There are challenges to strength, flexibility and coordination. Few female lion dancers can complete it smoothly, but the two girls have their own confidence: "We can do what boys can do, too," Kwong Junyu said.
Compared with traditional lion dances, Kwong Junyu mainly relies on strength to support the performance. He feels that the new generation of lion dance performances are more skillful, and pays more attention to the cooperation of lion heads and tails and the jumping power of lion heads. She felt that the lion dance performed by the whole girl team was likely to have better agility and flexibility than boys.
was replaced before taking the stage
"Girl's lion dance will affect Feng Shui"
But in fact, before that, girls' lion dances were repeatedly rejected by local traditional customs.
In traditional cognition, the lion performed by men is powerful and powerful, and can scare away ghosts and bless peace, while the lion dance of a girl is regarded as unlucky and cannot be put on the table.
2019 Spring Festival, girls who were studying lion dance for a stage, brought lion dance clothes, practiced their movements, and prepared to go to a family in the village to perform a festival fun show. "We are about to go on stage, and we have changed our clothes. As a result, the coach told us that we will change boys today..."
On the grounds that "girls dance lions will affect Feng Shui", the villagers asked the coach to remove the girl on the spot and replace it with boys perform lion dance. “I’m not willing to give up.We are capable. After practicing for so long, we were replaced..." The performance of everything was replaced on the spot, which became a knot in the girls' hearts. "Later, when we went back, the coach told us not to be discouraged, but to work harder. The master also said that only by persevering can you succeed. "
lion dance team coach Yu Weizhao and Zhang Zheliang both felt that gender should not be a shackle that restricts lion dance.
Two coaches purchased new team flags, pulled up a new team, and announced the establishment of the women's lion dance team. They wanted to prove to the villagers that female lion dance can also be wonderful. "Boys can dance the lions majestic and powerful, but girls can also dance the lions lightly and flexibly. "
This "different lion dance team" is indeed inevitable to be discussed in the village. A villager passed by and happened to meet a girl practicing martial arts, and she would cast strange eyes, "or use dialect to tell some unpleasant criticism. "So, from 2019 to 2021, this women's lion dance team has been silently polishing their skills, rarely participating in competitions or performances, keeping low profile, and reducing attention.
The trophy in the ancestral hall cabinet
is mostly the
Most of the
have been brought back by us in the village, but the girls' enthusiasm for training is getting higher and higher. What impressed Zhang Zheliang was that when practicing frog jumping , a girl had already practiced to tears and washed her face. After his face, he took the initiative to tell the coach to continue practicing.
The lion dance master who was walking after dinner, when he saw the girls practicing, he would occasionally be very interested, gesture a few times together, combine his experience to guide young people, or play a piece of drum music to show his spirit back then.
Such a "sense of the times" intergenerational communication also gave girls a deeper understanding of the art performance of lion dance. "Some of the drum rhythms decades ago are different from those commonly used now. So is horse stance. "They learn horse stance with a 45-degree angle on the upper body, while the seniors pursue the vertical body of their bodies when stance.
" The seniors are more focused on tradition, while we want to work hard to integrate tradition and innovation. "Kuang Junyu summarized the reasons for such differences in lion dance performances between the two generations. She believes that "innovation" is the advantage of contemporary lion dance culture. "Taoyuan Joyfulness", which won the gold medal in the group of lions in this exhibition competition, was arranged by the lion dance team itself, and many new designs were added.
For the lion dance team members, lion dance is charming. This charm is a help to "get full marks in the sports exam"; it is the friendship gained in the team; it is the breaking of prejudice, and the sense of accomplishment after practicing the movements. "It means a kind of positive energy, and we also want to pass on it. "Wu Shuxian said that his favorite lion dance move was actually the boxing ceremony before the performance began. "This represents the etiquette of our performers and is an embodiment of the lion awakening culture. "Wu Shuxian stood still with her fists and pushed her hands out with force.
On October 2, 2021, at the National Day Gala held in the village, this women's lion dance team took the stage again.
is different from the Spring Festival when she was kicked off two years ago. This performance received applause from the villagers. Someone took a video of the girls' performance and put it on the video platform, and received more than 110,000 likes. "Look at it now, most of the trophys in the village's ancestral hall cabinet were brought back by us. "They laughed, steel braces, acne, sneakers, high ponytails, all the symbols of youth were put into the gorgeous lion dance suit - the lions soared into the sky, and the girls' bangs were flying.
Z Q&A
What kind of era do you think Generation Z should have?
Kuang Junyu: Our young people in our generation need to inherit the culture of Lion Dance, and hope it will not decline.
Wu Shuxian: Lion Dance is a traditional Chinese culture, and I will do my own responsibility to pass on it.
What do you think is the difference between Generation Z?
Wu Shuxian: We have more ideas to innovate. The previous generation of lion dancers focused on tradition, and we are striving to foster traditional and new.
Source: Southern Metropolis Daily
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