Every festival, Spring Festival and opening ceremony, people will beat gongs and drums and dance lions. The "lion awakening" activity in the square dance originated in the late Ming Dynasty, originally to show the martial spirit of martial arts venues. In the middle of the Qing Dynasty, it was widely popular in Guangdong and Guangxi, and spread to Southeast Asia, North America and places where overseas Chinese lived. The "lions" in Sanyuanli and Pantang in Guangzhou are particularly distinctive. On holidays, lion dances and parades celebrate the harvest and encourage each other. If a "lion" comes to the door, it will be regarded as "exorcising evil spirits, glorifying ancestors and prospering" and will be thanked with a bride price. Now, there are lions teams in every town, major enterprises and some towns and villages in Guangzhou. The most powerful lion team in Guangzhou is the Guangzhou Workers' Lion Awakening Team. In fact, lions can be divided into "northern lions" and "southern lions". The "Northern Lion" emphasizes shape, while the "Southern Lion" in Guangzhou emphasizes "meaning", pays attention to bridges and horses, and is good at abstract and vivid expression. There are many modeling routines in "South Lion", such as sleeping soundly, coming out of the hole, rising, crossing three mountains, going upstairs and showing off the lion's power, which are similar in spirit; Happy is happy and broken, angry is angry, sad is close your eyes, happy is leap and big step. This is the southern lion dance method, emphasizing "meaning". There are also various forms, such as welcoming dance, jumping on the dragon gate, overlapping colors and picking green flowers. Methods can not be separated from broken step, horse stance, lunge, imaginary step, walking step, probing step, inserting step, unicorn step and internal and external swing. The climax of "lion dance" is "picking green". People hang or put the "green leaf bride price" symbolizing "evergreen pine and cypress, strong and healthy" (usually a lettuce rooted in it) high on a plate, and the "lion" performs according to the routine from exploring green, scaring green, eating green and spitting green. "Caiqing" is different from land green and high green, and the flower patterns are water green, bridge green, crab green, array door green, seven stars with the moon, nine fingers serial and so on. According to the height of picking green, at least two or three people step on their shoulders, and at most dozens of people carry disks to five or six scales to receive the bride price. The lion dancer must successfully collect "green" at one time, eat it, and then spit it out and throw it to his master. After the master accepted "Qing", he said that he was blessed and extremely happy. Guangzhou lion dance has a beautiful legend. According to legend, in the early Ming Dynasty, a kind of meat-winged tiger appeared in Guangdong. Its wings are like bats, and it flies to eat evil human flesh. Its skin can hide all kinds of ghosts. Guangdong is superstitious, and everything that can keep the house safe is regarded as auspicious. Therefore, people imitate the image of this beast and dance in festivals, telling all the creatures in the world not to bring disaster to the Lebanese people. Later, people studied it. In fact, it turned out to be the mount of Manjusri Bodhisattva, a lion with fur over the shoulder and the same color all over. When he runs, his fur stands up like a bat. Now the lion in Guangzhou wakes up with horns on his head. This is a very unique shape, called "lion", which is actually a kind of "four unlike", unlike lions, rhinoceroses, unicorns and butch. There is also a legend in this "four unlike". One-horned monster appeared in Foshan in the early Ming Dynasty, which caused harm to people and things and made people uneasy. Later, someone thought of a way to treat animals with animals. They made a one-horned lion out of bamboo paper and set off firecrackers with gongs and drums to scare the monsters away. Since then, the unicorn has been used as a mascot to ward off evil spirits and eliminate disasters.
four