During the Lantern Festival, when the lanterns are on, Pingyang Aojiang Wanda Plaza, a colorful and majestic 100-meter "dragon" is bright and colorful, just like a fire dragon going to sea, majestic. Gong Guangqiao, a 67-year-old veteran paper artist, is the person in charge of making this "dragon".
More than half a month later, on the day when the second dragon raises its head in the second lunar month, this big dragon will parade Aojiang City. Therefore, during the period after the Spring Festival, Gong Guangqiao and everyone have been busy with the final finishing work on the production of Dalong.
In February last year, the Erao River drew a big dragon (data map).
Become the inheritor of the Great Dragon Production
In Pingyang Ao River, the big dragon is a folk culture created and inherited by the local people for the sake of national peace and security, wind and rain, and has a history of more than 400 years, and was included in the national intangible cultural heritage list in 2014.
Every time the Ao River draws a big dragon, it attracts tens of thousands of viewers. In recent years, although the local people's love for this folk culture has been unprecedentedly high, there are very few craftsmen who have the unique "unique skill" of Dalong production.
As the second-generation inheritor of Aojiang Dalong production, Gong Guangqiao told us that perhaps his surname "Gong" has the word "dragon" in it, so he can get in touch with Dalong in this life. When he was a child, Gong Guangqiao was ingenious, and at the age of 18, he learned to make rice plastic with a master named Wen Yiwen, who was also a skilled paper craftsman.
Paper tie is a unique folk craft that integrates the skills of binding, pasting, paper-cutting, and painting, and has also been a trade in the society. Gong Guangqiao studied with his master for six years, and also learned all the skills of making all kinds of lantern lanterns and dragon lantern paper. "At that time, the dragon had disappeared for many years because of the ban, but the master told me very firmly that this folk cultural activity would flourish again in the future, and I didn't expect his prediction to come true. ”
Aojiang Dalong is "alive" again
In 2000, Huang Shiqin, the city-level inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage of the Aojiang River, proposed to reproduce the grand occasion of the Aojiang River and celebrate the Year of the Millennium. Master Wen Yiwen led Gong Guangqiao and the artists to take over the dragon making project: making dragon heads, fixing keels, making dragon bodies, wrapping dragon skins, installing dragon lanterns, and lacquer art painting. Gong Guangqiao cooperated with the master and was busy for dozens of days, and a big dragon made of bamboo, steel wire, foam, colored paper and other decorations was born. The dragon's head is 66 meters long and is carried forward by 120 people, bringing the celebration to a climax.
Since then, Aojiang Dalong has entered the lives of local people. In 2007, in order to pray for the Beijing Olympics and express the pride and joy of the people of Binh Duong, the Ao River Rowing Dragon once again appeared proudly. At that time, the master Wen Yiwen had passed away, and the 53-year-old Gong Guangqiao took on the responsibility of Dalong production. In 2010, the Aojiang Railway Station was opened to traffic, and the Aojiang River was once again and again celebrated.
In the 2012 Lantern Festival of the Year of the Dragon, at the "Dragon Welcoming Ceremony" in Aojiang, the dragon body of Aojiang participated in the activity was more than 80 meters long, weighing about 3 tons, and more than 200 strong men were responsible for carrying the dragon. There are 25 performance squares behind the majestic dragon, with as many as 900 participants, and the entire parade is thousands of kilometers long. The Aojiang River drew a big dragon and finally drew out the "famous hall", and that year it was also listed as one of the four major festivals and folk cultural activities in Pingyang County.
The Aojiang dragon is "on fire" again
In 2009, Pingyang's "Ao River Drawing Dragon" was included in the list of intangible cultural heritage of Zhejiang Province. With the fame of the Aojiang dragon, in September of the same year, at the invitation of the China (Zhejiang) Intangible Cultural Heritage Expo, the dragon went to Hangzhou to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the National Day.
In the scorching July, Gong Guangqiao led the artists to Hangzhou to make the scene of Dalong. He still remembers that in order to complete this glorious task, he deliberately went to the local Jinji Mountain to cut down moso bamboo and make keels and other materials to bring over.
Hard work pays off. At the opening ceremony, the dragon shook its head and sprayed water when it walked around the entire World Trade Center Plaza to the rostrum, attracting loud exclamations from the audience. After the event, the Aojiang dragon was collected by the Hangzhou Oriental Cultural Park and awarded the "First Dragon of the Orient" by the Zhejiang Provincial Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center.
In 2011, the first TV station Chinese international channel "Far Home - Coastal Trip" column team came to Aojiang to interview and shoot the Aojiang Dalong ......
Passing on the torch to let the dragon take off
In order to welcome the Year of the Dragon, since the second half of 2023, many villages in Pingyang, Ruian, Yueqing, Longwan and other places have invited Gong Guangqiao to make dragon lanterns. Gong Guangqiao was also commissioned to make the Aojiang Dragon for the twelfth time. Starting from the beginning of November 2023 in the lunar calendar, Gong Guangqiao has been busy for fifty or sixty days with seven or eight artists, including his 43-year-old son Gong Changfu.
As an older generation of paper craftsmen, Gong Guangqiao not only adhered to it all his life, but also let his 18-year-old eldest son learn to make paper more than 20 years ago in order to continue to inherit this traditional skill. Today, Gong Changfu's tie-making skills are also becoming more and more mature, and he has grown into the third generation of Dalong Production.
This year, the father and son and others worked together to complete the Aojiang dragon, the dragon body is 99 meters long, the most in the history, of which the dragon head is 5 meters high, and the diameter of the dragon body is 24 meters, standing at the head of the dragon can not see the tail of the dragon at all, which happens to respond to the folk saying that "the dragon sees the head but does not see the tail".
As a young generation of paper artists, Gong Changfu inherited the traditional craftsmanship accumulated by the paper craftsmen of the past dynasties, improved the processing of the dragon's binding process, added dragon feet and dragon tail swings, and upgraded the dragon sound effect, vividly presenting the swimming form of the dragon. "This will be a new highlight of this year's Aojiang Rowing Dragon. Gong Changfu said.
In the New Year, Gong Guangqiao and Gong Changfu, father and son, have a simple wish, "I hope that more young people will pay attention to and inherit folk culture, and carry forward the dragon of the Ao River together!"”
Wenzhou Evening News reporter Zhao Xiaoxian.
Photo: Zhao Xiaoxian.