Luoshan Village

History

Luoshan Village is in Hefeng Town, Lishui District, and the district government's Folk Customs page records the village's Luoshan Great Dragon under that name. The project page for Longwu (Luoshan Great Dragon) on the China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network states that the dragon has a history of more than four hundred years and that its rise is traditionally linked to Yang Pei'an, a jinshi (metropolitan graduate) of the Ming dynasty. The early history of the village itself and the date of its founding are not recorded in the sources used here.

Present state and remains

The village adjoins Shijiu Lake, and in the winter dry season the lakebed becomes the ground for the dragon dance. The dancing season normally begins on the twenty-fourth day of the twelfth lunar month and ends on the eighteenth day of the first lunar month, and the performance consists of parts such as tiaozhu and tiaolong. The district government page gives the dragon a length of nearly one hundred metres and more than five hundred participants, and calls it the "greatest dragon south of the Yangtze"; this is promotional wording on that page and is reproduced here in quotation marks.

In 2023 Luoshan of Hefeng, with four other villages, was included in the sixth batch of traditional villages of Jiangsu Province. This follows the working account of the Lishui District Culture and Tourism Bureau in its reply of November 2023.

Points of doubt

• The early history of Luoshan Village, the date of its founding and the origin of its name are not recorded in the sources used here. The era is given as Ming on the strength of the Ming origin of the Luoshan Great Dragon, not of the village's own founding.
• The national project page writes Luoshan without the word for village; this entry uses Luoshan Village on the authority of the district government's Folk Customs page.
• The sixth batch list of traditional villages of Jiangsu Province is authoritative as published by the provincial housing department; what is used here is the bureau's reply.