Luoshan Great Dragon

Historical origins

The project page for "Longwu (Luoshan Great Dragon)" on the China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network records the project as number 107, code III-4, entered in 2008 in the second batch of the national list of intangible cultural heritage, in the category of traditional dance and as an extended item; the reporting area or unit is given as Lishui District, Jiangsu, and the guardian unit as the Nanjing Lishui District Cultural Centre.

The same page states that the Luoshan Great Dragon has a history of more than four hundred years. The "Folk Customs" page of the district government records its origin in the Ming dynasty and a history of more than 400 years, and a report by the Lishui District Media Centre of January 2026 uses the same wording.

Form and content

The district government's "Folk Customs" page records that the dragon body at Luoshan is close to a hundred metres long and that as many as five hundred people take part. The same page calls it the "greatest dragon south of the Yangtze"; this is a promotional wording, reproduced here in quotation marks and not endorsed. The figure of five hundred participants is likewise that page's wording.

The national project page records that the dragon's tail is bare, unlike those of other dragons; that the dancing normally begins on the twenty-fourth day of the twelfth lunar month and ends on the eighteenth day of the first lunar month; that Luoshan Village adjoins Shijiu Lake, whose lakebed in the winter dry season becomes the ground for the dance; and that the performance consists of parts including tiaozhu (leaping the pearl) and tiaolong (leaping the dragon).

The district government's page adds that the people of Luoshan depend on Shijiu Lake for their living and dance on the lakebed when the new year comes.

The legend of the origin

The project page prefixes its account of the origin with the words "it is said": the rise of the Luoshan Great Dragon is said to be connected with Yang Pei'an, a jinshi (metropolitan graduate) of the Ming dynasty, who took shelter from the rain in a temple, met a small white dragon that was being punished, and brought it home. This is a legend; it is set out separately from the factual sections above and is not presented here as history.

Transmission and safeguarding

The national list records two representative bearers of the Luoshan Great Dragon.

Yang Shufan (serial number 03-0903), born in May 1936, is a representative bearer of the third batch for the national project "wulong (dragon dance), Luoshan Great Dragon"; the reporting area or unit is given as Lishui County, Jiangsu, Lishui not yet having been converted from a county into a district at that time, and the wording is reproduced as it stands. The page records that he died in April 2009.

Yang Muhai (serial number 04-1544), born in October 1947, is a representative bearer of the fourth batch for the national project "longwu (dragon dance), Luoshan Great Dragon". The résumé on that page calls him the fourth-generation transmitter of the Luoshan Great Dragon, and records that in 2007 he assisted Yang Shufan, then chairman of the Luoshan Great Dragon association and a national-level bearer, and mastered the whole procedure of the festival, and that from 2007 he raised funds and took charge of building the Luoshan Great Dragon exhibition hall. The generational statements, "fourth-generation transmitter" among them, come from the résumé on that page and are self-reported.

According to the reply of the district Culture and Tourism Bureau dated 28 November 2023, on 23 February 2023 the Luoshan Great Dragon was selected among the first national typical cases of "one county, one product" in culture and the arts. According to a report by the Lishui District Media Centre dated 14 January 2026, a project for the local transmission of the Luoshan Great Dragon and rural revitalisation was selected as a provincial best-practice case; the report gives neither the selecting body nor the batch, and these have not been verified and are not supplied here.

Uncertainties

First, "the greatest dragon south of the Yangtze" and the figure of five hundred participants are promotional wordings carried by the government page and the media; they are reproduced in quotation marks and have not been verified here.

Second, the legend of the origin attaches to Yang Pei'an, a jinshi of the Ming dynasty, and to a small white dragon, and the national project page already prefixes it with "it is said"; no source in this library establishes the documentary basis either for Yang Pei'an or for the story.

Third, the project name differs between two national-level sources: the project page writes "longwu" (dragon dance) while the page for Yang Shufan writes "wulong"; each is reproduced as it stands and neither is normalised. The batch of a bearer and the batch of a project are not the same thing.

Fourth, the selecting body and the batch of the 2026 provincial best-practice case have not been verified, and nothing is supplied in their place.

Fifth, the making of the dragon props, the form of the individual sections of the body and the state of the Luoshan Great Dragon exhibition hall have no source in this library and remain to be added.