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. What was publicised was a list of guardian units, and this entry cannot be read as saying that the Xisong Horse-lantern Dance has become a representative item of the fifth provincial batch; the list of guardian units follows the documents published by Jiangsu province.

Uncertainties

First, the year in which the district's third-batch list was published has not been verified, so the batch is recorded as the third district-level batch with the year still to be verified.

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.

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; this entry follows the fact in the text.

Fourth, the relation between Xisong Village and Tao Village, and the history of the village, have no dedicated source in this library and remain to be added.

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