Shrimp Lantern Dance

Item name and level

The Shrimp Lantern Dance appears in Appendix 2, the district-level ICH list, of the third batch of district-level ICH material, which states that the list contains 22 items in total; the name given there is "New Village Shrimp Lantern Dance". The body of the third-batch notice issued by the General Office of the Lishui District People's Government also cites the New Village Shrimp Lantern Dance as one of its examples, alongside malt sugar making and bamboo weaving.

According to a reply of 28 November 2023 from the Lishui District Culture and Tourism Bureau, eight projects were reported as entering the municipal-level representative ICH list in January 2023, among them Tiger-head Shoes, Hand-torn Chicken, Mingjue Pickled Greens, Helinfang Twin Dragons, Shrimp Lantern Dance and Shiqiu Fishing Songs. In the reply the project is written as the Shrimp Lantern Dance. This entry records the level as municipal and the item type as traditional dance, and leaves the batch number and the guardian unit pending verification.

Points in doubt

The same project is written differently in two documents: Appendix 2 of the third-batch district list and the body of the third-batch notice both give "New Village Shrimp Lantern Dance", while the municipal application as reported in the bureau reply gives "Shrimp Lantern Dance". Both wordings are reproduced here without being merged, and no conclusion is drawn as to whether they refer to the same project; which of them is the formal full name must be checked against the published district and municipal documents.

To be added

The materials and working steps of the lantern, the dimensions and structure of the shrimp-shaped lantern, the form of performance and the make-up of the team, the town or subdistrict to which the "new village" in the name belongs, the bearers, and the project number and gazette batch number in the municipal list are all absent from the cited sources.