The Spring Festival to the Lantern Festival, a non-heritage carnival of the New Year feast. Xiangfen Tower lion dance, Taiyuan wind fire meteor, Guangling dyeing paper-cut... Shanxi's rich and colorful annual custom intangible heritage contains the romance and wisdom of the people celebrating the New Year. Entering the year, they are no longer limited to "one place for one time", but rush to the broad stage in adherence and innovation, blooming a more brilliant light.

  From one village to the whole country

From January 29 to February 16, at the Colorful Yunnan Happy World in Kunming, Yunnan province, audiences can see the Tianta Lion Dance performance from Shanxi Province every day. 25 long benches built into 13 stories, like the "sky tower". The gongs and drums sounded, and the lion man was agile, flipping and climbing inside the tower, enticing two "big lions" and four "little lions" to climb upward. After climbing to the top, the lions were proud and made actions such as "looking for the moon in the water", "dragonfly water" and "Yao Pond to pick the stars", which won cheers from the audience.

Tianta Lion Dance is performed in southwest China's Yunnan province on Feb 7. (Photo by Pan Jinming)

Tianta Lion Dance is an annual and custom skill of Taosi Village, Xiangfen County, Shanxi Province, which has a history of thousands of years. In 2006, it became a national intangible cultural heritage for its artistic characteristics of surprise, danger, surprise, wonder and beauty. Li Dengshan, an 80-year-old villager, is his representative successor.

In the past ten years, Li Dengshan has cooperated with Xiangfen County Vocational and Technical Education Center to train more than 100 lion dance talents. Wang Junliang, president of Xiangfen County Vocational and Technical Education Center, said that introducing intangible cultural heritage items into campuses is conducive to cultural inheritance and cultivating students' interests, killing two birds with one stone.

"With the talent base, Tianta Lion Dance can go out of the village and go to the whole country." Li said that in recent years, they have performed in many places such as Yunnan, Hubei, Hunan and Liaoning, bringing a strong Lunar New Year flavor to local people.

A total of 13 people will perform in Yunnan this year, two-thirds of whom are young people. Chai Boyu, 21, a student at Shanxi Forestry Vocational and Technical College, is the leader. He has been studying the lion dance for six or seven years and earns about 4,000 yuan for the Spring Festival performance.

"Tianta Lion Dance has an inspiring power, and I feel very proud to bring such a good hometown culture to the south." Chai Boyu said.

  From one day to 365 days

At 7:30 p.m. in a Taiyuan restaurant, 67-year-old Jia Tiancang picked up a rope more than a meter long and prepared to perform. The rope was tied at both ends to a small iron cage containing red-burning charcoal. I saw him quickly dancing rope, like the Monkey King playing golden cudgle-like magic, one hand, two hands, mouth, or standing, or lying, or rolling, people in the fire, fire around people, showing the brilliant effect, the audience applauded.

Jia Tiancang performs at a restaurant in Taiyuan, North China's Taiyuan, Feb. 5, 2019. Photo by Wang Xuetao/Xinhua News Agency

This folk art is called Fenghuoshi meteor, which is created by learning from the meteor hammer in martial arts and the water meteor in acrobatics. Originally created for the Spring Festival Shehuo performance, it has become an independent performing art in recent years and has been listed as a representative project of the national intangible cultural heritage. Jia Tiancang, a villager of Dongjie Village, Jinyuan District, Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province, is its representative inheritor.

Jia Tiancang has been performing in restaurants for many years. The transformation of the wind fire meteor from "playing a trick on every festival" to "normal performance" cannot be separated from his innovative consciousness.

In order to meet the needs of indoor stage performance, Jia Tiancang improved the props, worked out the flash ball wind fire meteor, and constantly innovated more than 100 kinds of action forms, the battle universe, the fire dragon across the bridge, the mouth bite of the double dragon, the seawater backflow... It greatly increases the enjoyment.

"After the regular performance, there is both a stable income and a display platform, which is more conducive to cultural inheritance." Jia Tiancang proudly said that he has now trained more than 70 apprentices in many places across the country, and when the apprentices surpass him, they will complete their mission.

  From single to multiple

Golden snake, magpie news, magpie branches, peacock peony... During the Spring Festival, a Chinese businessman doing medical equipment business in the United States gave more than 1,000 sets of dyed paper cuttings purchased from Guangling County in Shanxi Province as a companion gift to his customers. Bright and bright colors and beautiful and auspicious patterns bring the festival of the New Year.

The export of Guangling dyeing paper-cut on the eve of the Spring Festival. (Photo by Liu Lihua)

"We have been working together for two or three years, and the paper cutting ceremony is very popular in the United States." National intangible cultural heritage Guangling dyed paper-cut representative inheritor Zhang Duotang said.

Guangling dyeing paper-cut is unique in the colorful paper-cut art garden because of cutting and dyeing, which can achieve the double effect of painting and paper-cutting, and is known as a unique Chinese folk art.

"Families used to decorate their homes with window decorations during New Year's holidays." Zhang Duotang recalled that every New Year, the shopkeepers held a display board, above a wooden lattice pasted with paper-cut patterns, or the market set up, or street hawking, becoming a unique local scene. However, with the change of The Times, the enthusiasm of young people to stick window flowers is waning, and artists have to seek a way to "break out".

Today, Guangling dyeing paper-cut has developed from a single decoration to decoration, small gifts, souvenirs, art, collections and other diversified products, in addition to the traditional flowers, birds, fish and insects, Shanxi scenery series paper-cut is also popular.

Small knives are "carving" out of the big industry. Zhang Duotang told reporters that the annual sales of Shanxi Duotang Paper-cutting Cultural Industrial Park Co., Ltd. reach more than 10 million yuan, and have been sold to more than 20 countries such as the United States, Japan, Canada, Malaysia and Singapore. (Reporter Wang Xuetao)