简体 ｜ 繁體 ｜ English ｜ 日本語 ｜ 한국어

The formal item name in the list is “yingge”; this page’s title keeps the popular name, “yingge wu”. Yingge is a folk square dance found in Chaoshan and parts of eastern Guangdong, combining dance, southern boxing routines and operatic acting. The official entry also records other names — “eagle song”, “parrot”, “singing yingge”, “yangge” — performed by men in the traditional form (women’s teams are common today), playing the heroes of Mount Liang, the name taken to mean singing in praise of heroes. These sentences come from the three project entries on the China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network, which share one description.

The listing falls in two batches:2006, Yingge (Puning Yingge and Chaoyang Yingge) was approved by the State Council for the first batch of the national list of ICH representative items, category traditional dance, item number Ⅲ-8, as a newly added item;2011, Yingge (Jiazi Yingge) was entered as an extension item in the third batch, nominated by Lufeng, Guangdong. Three items share the number but not the place; each is listed separately, and they are not three ways of dancing one item.

How is yingge related to yangge?　Both names appear in the official entries, but a recorded name and an explanation of origins are different questions. The Chaoyang entry says the local Yingge “by the Ming had absorbed the northern big-drum yangge”; the Jiazi entry says it “came from Fujian in the early Ming” and was improved by local martial artists in the late Ming. Those sentences describe where it came from, which is not the same thing as “yangge” among the other names. The material differs, so both are recorded here and no single conclusion is drawn.

The gear is two round wooden sticks a dancer, one in each hand, struck against each other to the gongs and drums, the feet in the riding crouch and springing sideways. Teams turn out in even numbers; the official entry describes team sizes ranging from 12 to 108 dancers, and the Puning profile gives 24, 36, 72 up to 108. These are the ceilings the entry states — how long a team can be drawn up. The 107 that is often quoted answers a different question, the size of the cast: by the establishment of the 108 generals a full line-up usually fields 107, the missing seat being Lu Junyi, as the next section explains. A performance has two parts, the front section and the rear section: the front is gongs, drums and the dance, the rear is short plays and acrobatics. The tempo divides into slow, medium and fast, the routines run to as many as twenty, and the common names are washing the street, New Year calls, laying the fields, back strike, passing the hip, cradling the stick and hooking the foot.

Sticks differ in length from team to team. Three figures can be found, and none is measured the same way. The Puning and Chaoyang entries on the national project page both say in their description “two round short wooden sticks each (10 cm across, 20 cm long)”, which records the stick as a short rod; another passage of the same entry says the slow tempo uses “a stick longer than other schools” and the fast tempo “a shorter yingge stick”, so the page itself does not treat the figure as fixed. Chaoyang district has a local standard, “Intangible cultural heritage: Chaoyang Yingge”, DB 4405/T 315—2025, whose table 2 records that “the length of the yingge stick varies with the kind of yingge, generally 40 cm to 61 cm”, and adds that “the shaft is usually black or red, and patterns may be added to the head and the shaft for decoration”. The editor measured a pair in current use by the Mianbei Houxi team at 58 cm, near the top of that range. The three figures are not merged: 20 cm is the short route, 40 to 61 cm is the range across kinds, and 58 cm is one pair in one team, not a rule.

The “10 cm across” figure on the project page does not match the object: that thickness will not close in one hand, and it does not sit with a “20 cm long” at a two-to-one ratio. The source says what it says; it is copied here unchanged and the point is left open for checking.

The headcounts and routine names above rest mainly on the Puning project material; actual gear and naming differ from team to team. Take “laying the fields”: one and the same entry writes it two ways, “laying the year” in the general passage and “laying the fields” in the Puning passage. This page follows the Puning spelling and keeps both, unforced.

In recent years it is often called “China’s war dance”. That is a promotional name, not a scholarly designation, and it does not appear in the early local gazetteers; it must be marked as such when quoted.

Headcounts: 107 and 108 answer different questions

The official project page carries both numbers: the general rule “at least 12, up to 108”, and in the Puning passage “at least 24 or 36, at most 72, up to 108”. These are the ceilings the introduction gives, answering the question “how long can a team be”.

107 is about the cast of characters. Yingge fills its ranks from the 108 heroes of Mount Liang, thirty-six heavenly spirits and seventy-two earthly ones. The episode usually performed is the assault on Damingfu and the rescue of Lu Junyi — Lu is in prison, he is the man being rescued, he does not stand in the rescuing line, and his is the seat that is missing.The Jin’ou township team‘s own material follows this and states that the establishment takes the two sets, thirty-six heavenly and seventy-two earthly.

What kind of evidence: the official page does not say 107. It appears in teams’ own accounts and in reports; this page records it as the current telling, not as an official finding.

The two articles relied on, on the same subject, were published on 15 February 2024 and 16 July 2026, and their source relationship has not been checked; they should be read together, and the number of pieces should not be taken as the number of independent witnesses.

The two numbers do not conflict: one answers “how many at most”, the other “how many the cast requires”. On seeing “Yingge, 108 dancers” there is no need to correct it, and on seeing 107 no need to doubt it; first see which question it is answering.

This volume covers Yingge only; Chaoshan has fifteen national-level ICH items in all, listed in the ICH list.

← Back to Yingge danceNext volume: stick work →

Sources	Type
Yingge (Puning Yingge)China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network / Digital Museum of China ICHNo publication date on the item page; announced in the first batch, 2006	National list entry
Yingge (Chaoyang Yingge)Ibid.No publication date on the item page; announced in the first batch, 2006	National list entry
Yingge (Jiazi Yingge)Ibid.No publication date on the item page; third batch, 2011 (extension item)	National list entry
Publication of the revised protection units for national ICH representative itemsDepartment of Intangible Cultural Heritage, Ministry of Culture and Tourism2019-12-05	Ministry release
Puning Yingge DanceOffice of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Guangdong Provincial Committee (Foreign Affairs Office of the Guangdong Provincial People’s Government)2026-07-24(https certificate error; this link runs on http)	Government website introduction
Reply to Proposal No. 20250334 of the Fourth Session of the 14th Shantou CPPCCOffice of the Chaoyang District People’s Government, Shantou2025-05-14(https certificate error; this link runs on http)	Government information disclosure
Ximen Women’s Yingge Team, ChaoyangShantou Polytechnic, “Yingge dance” feature2025-03-06	College feature
“Once in a lifetime, you must see Yingge dance in Chaoshan!”China News Service2024-02-28	report

Access date: all eight items above were opened one by one on 23 October 2026 and were reachable that day. Two further team counts sit outside the table for want of a stable direct link: the Chaoyang team count in Southern.com, November 2024, and the Puning team count on the Puning municipal government site, January 2024; both are named in the text. The figures they record can be checked against two government documents already in the table (the Chaoyang district government reply of May 2025 and the provincial foreign affairs office’s July 2026 note on a visit), so the text sets the two accounts side by side and does not argue from the unlinked items alone. Two further pieces were read but not cited and so are not listed: the National Ethnic Affairs Commission’s “Dance drama Yingge: where the sticks rise, one family” (2026-08) and the Guangdong Department of Housing and Urban-Rural Development’s “Light and shadow on the hometown of emigrants”.

Last revised: 25 October 2026