Special glue that holds people

Dancing in public may not be everyone's cup of tea, but some see it as a social activity as culturally important as libraries and museums, Deng Zhangyu reports.

In a 450-year-old ancestral temple in a village in East China's Jiangxi province, as dusk falls, a group of women begins what has become a daily ritual. In this hall in which villagers once paid respect to their ancestors, the women are practicing dance routines. Outside there is a relaxed air as adults who have been working in the nearby fields unwind while their children play and dogs scamper about.

At the same time in a spacious downtown square about 200 kilometers away in Changsha, capital of Hunan province, more than 1,000 dancers, mostly in their 50s and 60s, make the moves as music blares out from speakers.