Waking lion, also known as "Rui Lion", belongs to the Southern Lion in the Chinese Lion Dance, originated from the Han Dynasty, and was born from the Tang Dynasty Court Lion Dance. Every New Year's Festival, or there are festive activities, there will be a lion awakening to help celebrate, long-lasting prosperity, passed down through the generations, in 2006 by the State Council into the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage list. It has a history of more than 1,000 years in Guangdong, which not only symbolizes ruyi and auspiciousness, but also a symbol of strength, bravery and strength, a complex, and a spiritual force.
On Saturday, January 15, at the "Wenyuan Academy" of Guangzhou Cultural Park, Zhao Weibin, the provincial representative inheritor of guangdong Xingshi, a representative project of national intangible cultural heritage, brought parents and children of 15 families to make a mighty "lion's head".
This is Zhao Weibin's last lion awakening class for the public before the Spring Festival of the Year of the Tiger, and the heat is as good as ever, "I heard that as soon as the quota was launched, it was killed in a second." He said.
Zhao Weibin
Its people
Born into a family of awakening lions, shuttling through different "dimensions"
When talking about the waking lion in Guangzhou, the name "Zhao Weibin" is often mentioned. In addition to performing and inheriting the traditional awakening of lions, he plays with cultural creation, plays with robots, plays with contemporary art, plays with movies... In his hand, the awakening lion seemed to be installed with a time and space shuttle, which could freely enter and exit different "dimensions".
In 1973, Zhao Weibin was born in a family of lion dance performers, his father was Zhao Jihong, the "King of the Southern Lions", who was the fifth generation of the "Zhao Family Lion". Since the age of 5, he has been practicing art with his father, and he has done his best to pass on his father's true traditions, dancing lions, playing big-headed Buddhas, drumming, gongs, cymbals, and mastering everything. During his primary school years, he became the protagonist of the "Guangzhou Youth and Children's Lion Awakening Team", and in middle school, he was the core figure and "little coach" of the formation of the school lion team. During college, he used his spare time to assist his father in running the Guangzhou Workers' Lions Association. But after graduation, he did not immediately join the Dragon and Lion Regiment because "my father felt it was better to have a stable job."
In 1994, while working, Zhao Weibin concurrently served as the head coach of the Guangzhou Workers' Lion Awakening Association. At that time, his father Zhao Jihong was worried that he did not have the funds to go to Malaysia to participate in international competitions, and Li Ziliu, the then mayor of Guangzhou, learned about the situation and allocated funds to support it. At the same time, Li Ziliu also woke up Zhao Weibin, "You may wish to use the economic knowledge you have learned to make the cause of waking lions stronger and bigger." Therefore, Zhao Weibin founded the Guangzhou Southern Awakening Lion Trade Development Company, and full-time invested in the protection and inheritance of the awakening lion.
At the first Guangzhou Dragon and Lion Dance Open Competition, Hongyi Guoshuhui won the gold medal.
On New Year's Day 2022, at the first Guangzhou Dragon and Lion Dance Open Competition, the Southern Lion Awakening Women's Lion Awakening Team won the silver medal.
In that year, Zhao Weibin won his first international gold medal in Malaysia. He deeply felt the influence of Guangdong Awakening Lion on the international stage, and since then he has also insisted on promoting and developing the cause of Waking Lion, so that the Awakening Lion Association has developed into one of the well-known Chinese and foreign Awakening Lion Societies, and launched the brand of Awakening Lion in southern China.
Looking back, Zhao Weibin couldn't help but sigh: "I think this road is the right one!" In his heart, the awakening lion culture has flowed in his blood, and the lion awakening performance not only brings him the applause of the audience, but more importantly, the satisfaction and pride brought by the promotion of traditional culture and the spirit of the lion. He said: "The lion's head is 20 pounds, and the dance is covered in sweat, which is very bitter and tired, but it is the responsibility of our generation to pass on it." ”
In 1983, Zhao Jihong took three apprentices on his first trip with the guangzhou acrobatic troupe team to Thailand. This is also the first time that nanshi has performed abroad after the founding of New China, causing a sensation among overseas Chinese. At the closing of the 1987 National Games, the Awakening Lions performed for the first time at a major sports event. Then, in the 2008 Olympic Games, the 2010 Asian Games, etc., the awakening of the lion has become a performance project of large-scale sports activities. The Guangzhou Awakening Lion also created a record: it performed continuously at the opening ceremony of the Canton Fair for more than 40 years, creating a miracle in the history of the exhibition.
The awakening lion highlights a "wake" word, paying attention to the horse step in the action, and the most important prop for the awakening lion is the lion's head, unlike the pursuit of the similar northern lion, the awakening lion pays more attention to the god-like - whether it is a high unicorn or a face-like oil paint, it is telling people that the lion's head is the first. In the lion dance, waking the lion mainly shows the eight kinds of expressions of lion joy, anger, mourning, music, movement, stillness, surprise and doubt, with Caiqing being the most exciting. "Picking green" is the essence of waking up the lion, there are processes such as starting, bearing, turning, and closing, which is dramatic and storylike. Because of this, it is of great value for exercising the physical fitness, teamwork, tenacity and understanding of traditional culture among young people.
In 2019, adopting the "base +" model, Zhao Weibin put the first youth inheritance base of Guangzhou Dragon and Lion Association in Liwan Lake, with Liwan as the center, radiating the whole city, and for more than two years, the "Non-Heritage Lion Into The Campus" activity was carried out in 176 large, middle and primary schools and kindergartens in the city, and more than 30,000 students understood and learned the culture and skills of the lion. He pioneered the "Primary School Students Wake Up Lion Recess Exercise", and often works with children, starting from the most basic etiquette and stories in the lion dance movements, and leading them into the world of waking lions.
In 1993, the Hong Kong movie "The Lion King" was released, and Zhao Weibin, who was 20 years old at the time, participated in the performance of the film. Nearly 30 years later, the development of Waking Lion in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area is still prosperous, and Zhao Weibin has also grown from a movie stand-in to the most influential awakening lion culture promoter. Time flies, and what does not perish is the endless vitality of excellent traditional culture.
Its thing
Awakening lions can be made younger, more fashionable, and more attractive
At the end of last year, Zhao Weibin and contemporary artist Noise Temple collaborated on a group of "contemporary + traditional" cross-border works in the Xiguan House at No. 3 Jixiangfang in Yongqingfang. Noise Temple's "Dance of the Dragon" multimedia work, arranged a "fox" on the wall, with a light touch of the fox's eyes with his hand, cheerful and lively music played, the fox "woke up", began to flicker, blink, run... In the end, accompanied by fireworks, the background of the wall becomes a golden universe. The work combines the image of "dotting" in waking up the lion with the image of fireworks set off during the Spring Festival, and uses contemporary technology to create a content that is both contemporary and rich in traditional cultural charm.
Corresponding to this is the huge red lion head designed by Zhao Weibin, the audience can transform into a lion dancer, enter the lion head from the rear, and operate it by themselves, so that the giant lion can blink and move its ears, see the exquisite internal structure, and experience the "universe of the lion dancer". "This project is in cooperation with Wang Zi geng, a teacher from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, who hopes to use a concept of space to present the lion awakening, which is the biggest lion head we have done."
On August 22, 2020, the Yongqingfang Intangible Cultural Heritage Block was officially opened, introducing 10 stationed projects with strong innovation awareness and market operation capabilities, such as Guangcai, Guangxiu, enamel, bone carving, olive carving, awakening lion, cake printing, flute and guqin, and establishing 10 intangible cultural heritage master studios integrating display, exhibition, experience, inheritance, exchange and training.
Zhao Weibin's lion awakening workshop is at the entrance of the block. The big red façade is particularly eye-catching in the surrounding plain building façade. On the first floor of the workshop, there are various awakening lion theme cultural creations, and as you go inside, two somatosensory robots in the shape of a lion awakening stand on the glass counter. There is also a small coffee bar opposite.
On the upper floor of the workshop is the Awakening Lion Museum, which contains a huge lion head, as well as a number of rare characteristic lion heads, and the exhibition board of the awakening lion culture in the form of animation is refreshing. Zhao Weibin also arranged the Awakening Lion Somatosensory Robot Ring Competition - this is the world's first lion awakening robot with man-machine integration operation technology, which can not only play drums and lion dances, but also stage the "Lion King Competition". Plus those 3D printed lion heads, VR lion awakening and AR lion jointly developed with the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and animation technology companies... It has become a small and beautiful window to display intangible cultural heritage, Cantonese culture and Lingnan culture.
In Zhao Weibin's view, the celebration, liveliness, sunshine, dexterity, hard work, and not anger and threat of waking up the lion are all vivid portrayals of the spirit of Guangzhou. Today, it can be made younger, more up-to-date, and more attractive. He tirelessly explores the path of presenting the lion under the modes of "art +" and "technology +".
In the self-created dragon and lion performance "Dragon, Lion, Jump Up!" In it, the lion accompanies the pop music, dances hip-hop, and the traditional color ball that teases the lion becomes an electric lion cub. The Luminous Dragon made the young audience scream continuously. The dragon body is made of bamboo rattan and paper, and a special fluorescent material is attached. The lights went out, and the audience could not see the performers, only the long dragon that shone throughout the body in the darkness, constantly rolling and rolling, shaking its head and tail.
Zhao Weibin also served as the lion awakening director of the dance drama "Wake Up Lion", systematically training the actors, and pushing the folk art of waking the lion to a higher artistic hall. On this basis, he also created his own theatrical version of the children's lion awakening drama, creatively combining the awakening lion with hip-hop dance, and performed 16 consecutive performances in the Shanghai Children's Art Theater three times in two years, and the scene was full.
Recently, Zhao Weibin also attended the first national premiere of "Lion Boy" with producer Zhang Miao, director Sun Haipeng and producer Cheng Haiming, opening the film with the most traditional "lion" ceremony and promoting the spread of lion culture.
For the lion awakening performance itself, Zhao Weibin is also constantly innovating. The first is the lightweighting of the lion's head. "In order for children to learn to wake up lions, a lion's head is now only 3.6 pounds. The lion's tail was originally 2.8 meters long, and now it has been transformed into a retractable type, with the longest extending to 2.3 meters and the shortest shrinking to 1.8 meters, and the whole image looks more like a lion. ”
The use of color to wake up lions is also richer. The original waking lion, the color is only monotonous red, yellow and black, but now the color is very gorgeous. With the development of the times, the materials used are getting better and better, including clothing, the color of the previous clothing is gray and dark, and now it is purple and red, very beautiful.
Its words
The unique place to wake up the lion is its "symbolism"
Guangzhou Daily: You have done a lot of cross-border projects, so that people from different backgrounds, different projects, and different regions can better understand and fall in love with waking lions.
Zhao Weibin: The key to the dissemination of many intangible cultural heritage projects to this day is to dissemination. From the time I followed my father into the lion's line, we've been focusing on how to spread it for more than 40 years. The unique thing about waking up the lion is that its "symbol" is very strong: first, as soon as you see this lion, you know that it is Chinese. Secondly, it is very auspicious and festive, it will not be sad to see the lion awake, maybe the two people have just quarreled, as soon as they see the lion dancing, the drum is knocked up, and the bad emotions are immediately left behind.
The awakening lions of each era should have different aesthetic logics and different ways of dissemination. In 1983, we were invited by an old overseas Chinese in Thailand to visit Thailand, and he proposed to take the waking lion out. But at that time, there were no Southern Lions on the Guangzhou Acrobatic Troupe, so they found us. My father took some of their actors to rehearse some moves in a very short time, and even then, it caused a big stir. In addition, that year's "Lion King Battle" became popular in Foshan, which also made Huang Feihong's artistic image more deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and also explained the importance of communication.
Guangzhou Daily: The theme of waking the lion now has a lot of other forms of expression to show, such as dance dramas, movies, comics, etc. How do you think that as an intangible cultural heritage, how to combine the awakening lion with other performing arts?
Zhao Weibin: When polishing the script of the "Wake Up Lion" dance drama, the creative team went to many places, but still couldn't find a particularly good point. Then they came to us and as soon as they came in they said, "This is where we're looking!" They feel that we have a good heritage here and a rich cultural heritage. That day, we spent an afternoon chatting in my studio, and he invited me to join their creative team as an instructor for Awakening Lion.
In fact, many people do not know that the awakening lion in the classification system of intangible cultural heritage itself belongs to the "traditional dance", called "lion dance". There are many difficulties in combining traditional dance and contemporary dance, first of all to find the point of integration, followed by training professional dancers, of course, but also to clarify what this dance drama is about. In the end, everyone feels that it is necessary to make the word "awakening" bigger, and put the things of national awakening into it in addition to the traditional cultural connotation.
Text, photo/Guangzhou Daily New Flower City Reporter: Bu Songzhu (some pictures provided by Guangzhou Intangible Cultural Heritage Center)
Guangzhou Daily New Flower City Editor: Peng Wenqiang