Global EditionASIA 中文双语Français
Culture
Home / Culture / Events and Festivals

Art form gets back in the saddle

By Yang Feiyue and Sun Ruisheng | China Daily | Updated: 2022-09-13 08:09
Share
Share - WeChat
Guo (left) performs with his daughter.[Photo provided by Tian Zhaoyun /For China Daily]

Back in the Tang Dynasty (618-907), a "bamboo horse" was revealed in the great poet Li Bai's work, The River-Merchant's Wife.

It depicts a wife's memories of her husband as a young boy, who used bamboo stilts to mimic a horse.

Today, an ancient art form featuring the bamboo horse has found a new lease on life in North China's Shanxi province.

At one performance, fluttering polychromatic flags danced in the wind and lanterns and colored streamers adorned the mountain village of Guojiagou in late July.

Actors were in traditional opera makeup and costumes, ready to get onstage. They adroitly tied nearly 1-meter-long stilts to their legs, with their feet on a small horizontally protruding wooden stick that bore their weight.

After ensuring the stilts were securely fastened, they nimbly sprang up and stepped into an opening in the middle of the bamboo horse prop, before carrying the whole thing up and dashing forward.

For a split second, they looked like some ancient horse-riding generals, brandishing swords for battle.

Applause broke out, as if on cue, from the crowd.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next   >>|
Most Popular
Top
BACK TO THE TOP
English
Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.
License for publishing multimedia online 0108263

Registration Number: 130349
FOLLOW US