Pingjiang nine-dragon dance

Pingjiang nine-dragon dance, known as a type of folk dance popular among the people in Pingjiang county, Yueyang city, was prosperous in the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907).

According to legend, the patriotic poet Qu Yuan committed suicide by drowning himself at Miluo River to protest against the corruption of his era. Fearing that Qu Yuan's body would sink underwater, people living along the Miluo River paddled their boats into the river where Qu Yuan had sunk to rescue the patriotic poet.

Deeply moved by what Qu Yuan had done, the nine sons of Dragon King of the Dongting Lake tried every endeavor to stir huge waves and create a disturbance in the lake, attempting to force his father to return Qu Yuan's body to earth. Local people felt so grateful for the chivalrous deed of the nine dragons that they created the nine-dragon dance and imitated their postures in memory of them.

With the passage of time, the dragon dance has been continuously innovated in terms of performance patterns. It has developed from simple to complicated and displays their distinctive local characteristics.

In 1985, led by the Pingjiang county Cultural Affairs Bureau, a twenty-minute large dance called "Nine Dragons Disturbing the Dongting Lake" was created by integrating 18 typical dragon dance patterns.

This dance consists of three chapters, namely, "flood dragon playing with water", "nine colorful dragons dancing together" and "disturbing the Dongting Lake". In 1991, the dance "Nine Dragons Disturbing the Dongting Lake" won the gold medal in the China Yueyang International Dragon Boat Festival.