Xisong Horse-lantern Dance

Form and content

The "Folk Customs" page of the district government records, under its entry for the horse-lantern dance, that the lantern is made of bamboo splints, covered with pasted paper and fitted with candles in head and tail, and that it is fixed to the performer's waist during the dance. The page does not say whether the lantern of the Xisong dance is made in the same way, and this entry draws no inference from it.

Historical origins

A report in the Nanjing Morning Post (People's Daily app) states that the Xisong Horse-lantern Dance has been passed down for five hundred years. "Five hundred years" is a rounded figure in the press wording; it is reproduced as it stands and is not converted into specific years.

The second annex to the district's third-batch list, "District-level intangible cultural heritage list, twenty-two items in all", carries the entry "Xisong Horse-lantern Dance". The same annex also lists the horse-lantern dances of Yunheshan, Jiutang, Baishiguan, Dacun and Qingwei; the entries are reproduced as they stand.

Transmission and safeguarding

According to the report in the Nanjing Morning Post (People's Daily app), a public notice of 25 March 2024 listed the guardian units for the fifth batch of provincial-level representative items of intangible cultural heritage, and the Xisong Horse-lantern Dance was among them. A distinction has to be drawn here: a guardian unit and a project are two different things, and what was publicised on that occasion was a list of guardian units.

The extension list of the fifth batch of provincial representative items of intangible cultural heritage, "III. Traditional Dances", published under Su Zheng Fa [2023] No. 100 of 3 November 2023 by the Jiangsu Provincial People's Government, carries the entry "Bamboo Horse (Xisong Horse-lantern Dance)", number JS-III-6, serial number 29, with Lishui District, Nanjing, as the applying area or unit, listed as an extension sub-item under the same number as "Bamboo Horse (Xishe Small Horse-lantern Dance)" of Gaochun District, Nanjing, and the like. The provincial level of the Xisong Horse-lantern Dance is therefore confirmed by the document published by the province, and this governs the earlier statement that the item could not be written up as a fifth-batch provincial project on the strength of the media report. The public notice of guardian units reported at the time and the entry in the project list made here are two different things, and both stand.

Uncertainties

First, the year of publication of the district's third-batch list has been filled in as 2017 from the document number (Li Zheng Fa [2017] No. 197), the four entries of that batch being dealt with together in the audit of 29 September 2026; the batch in the front matter of this entry records the provincial fifth-batch extension project, so it is unaffected.

Second, the guardian unit and the district-level representative bearers of the Xisong Horse-lantern Dance within the district list have not been verified in the sources used here and remain to be added; the provincial extension list gives only the project name, number and applying area or unit, and gives neither guardian unit nor bearers, so the guardian unit is still to be verified.

Third, the headline of the media report carries the words "provincial-level intangible cultural heritage" while the fact it reports is a public notice of guardian units; the level is confirmed here from the provincial document, while the report itself is still recorded according to the fact in its text.

Fourth, an extension project shares the number of its main project: JS-III-6 is the number of the "Bamboo Horse" series, and the provincial document does not set out separately the relation between the serial number of this extension item and that of the main project, so no inference is drawn here.

Fifth, the history of Xisong Village has no dedicated source in this library and remains to be added. The administrative affiliation of the village has now been supplied by the entry on Xisong Village, on the mutual corroboration of the Nanjing Morning Post of March 2024 and the level of Taocun as a residents' committee in the district's administrative divisions page, so the place_ref of this entry is filled in as ls:place:xisong-village; the date of foundation and the origin of the village name still have no source.

Sixth, the formations, tunes, season of performance and line of transmission of the dance have no source in this library and remain to be added.