Tongliang Dragon Dance

Tongliang dragon dance is a dragon-prop dance art of Tongliang district in Chongqing, rising in the Ming and reaching its height in the Qing, handed down ever since. It spans two families, the dragon-lantern dances, with forms such as the great writhing dragon and the fire dragon, and the colored-lantern dances, with figures like the carp leaping the dragon gate, all interwoven with the local lantern-binding craft.

The dance prizes the union of dancer and dragon, the beast moving as one with the people who bear it, performers on poles sending a dragon tens of meters long surging and weaving to the beat of gongs and drums. Most stunning is the fire dragon, danced bare-chested amid showers of molten-iron sparks, a dazzling, heart-stopping spectacle.

Uniting dance, music, lantern-binding, and folk custom, the Tongliang dragon dance is an outstanding emblem of the region's folk art and has performed at national celebrations. Inscribed on the first national intangible-heritage list in 2006, it has earned Tongliang the name of China's home of the dragon dance.

It is often performed at Spring Festival and Lantern Festival and at cultural-tourism events across Chongqing, with the fire-dragon display the most mesmerizing of all.