Anhui Volume:Huagudeng (Flower DrumLantern)

Flower Drum Lantern, popular in more than 20 cities and counties of Huainan, Fengtai, Huaiyuan, Yingshang, etc. along the Huai River throughAnhui Province, is a comprehensive folk art form which includes dancing, singing, gong and drum beating, martial art andacrobaticsperformed on festival and seasonal occasions.

Dancing is the major element of Huagudeng which consists of "Dachang", is "Xiaochang" and "Pangu" while "Dachang" is is a group dance; Xiaochang a narrative dance of two or three dancers and its central part and Pangu shows a good combination of dancing, martial arts and technical skills with a taste of plastic arts.Whenever the Spring Festival arrives, the dancing teams of each village and rural area compete with each other in rushing off to dance in thetemples and at the fairs, and sometimes there are one or several dozens of teams dancing there, which draws a colorful painting with a strong taste of rustic folklore.

Guangdong Volume: Yingge

Yingge has several names with the similar pronunciation in Chinese, such as "Yinge", "Yangge" and "Yingge", which are popular inChaozhou, Shantou, etc. and prosperous in the two cities of Puning and Chaoyang of Guangdong Province.

There are three different sizes of the dancing teams according to the numbers written in the Tale of the Waterside: 36 members (Heavenly Gods), 72 members (Earthly Gods) and 108 members (Heroes in the Liangshan Mountain), each dancer uses thefacial makeupclearly in the Chaozhou or Shantou style while based on his imagination of how his hero looks like in this famous novel, which is the most outstanding character of Yingge.

The dancing of Yingge has three types as lento, moderate, and allegro while the steps of the lento are stable, extensive, intoxicated like drunk, and triumphant; the gavel beating of moderate is rich and flexible, with forceful movements and constantly changing patterns; and the movements of allegro are fast but not confused, gradually leading to their extreme and finally coming to its end abruptly.