| As a kind of folk activity with long history and rich connotations, dragon dance of our Chinese nation is not only a piece of valuable living heritage in the world culture, but also represents the cultural identity of the Chinese nation in the era of globalization.This paper deals with the custom of dragon dance in a family-centered village which is located in Dabie Mountains. It aims to interpret the cultural connotations of dragon dance under the background of regional culture, and explores its evolution as social changes take place in the villages and how it plays an active role in the construction of Chinese people's daily life.Before this very case study, the paper starts with a general overview of Chinese dragon dance from the perspective of time and space. It traces the development of dragon dance from pre-Qin days to Ming and Qing Dynasty, and divides the Chinese custom of dragon dance into five main districts:Yangtze River valley, Southeast Coast, Lingnan (the south of the five ridges region), Yunnan-Kweichow Plateau and Huanghe valley. Furthermore, it generalize the basic character of these five districts in order to provide a background of the study on dragon dance.The spot of these investigation is zhangjiawan village in Hubei province.The introduction of this village is unfolded with the geographic environment and the history o f the family which is relevant to the dragon dance. Zhangjiawan locates in the head of Wu and the tail of Chu, which is near by the Zhongyuan culture and is a cultural crossing area. But the dragon dance in this distinct is still belongs to Yangtze River valley. The special humane geographical environment of Dabie mountains has brought up some of its characteristics to this village. Zhangjiawan is a natural villages in which inhabit people with a single name—Zhang, so its dragon activities have a distinct familial color. Therefore, understanding its family organization becomes an important basic for understanding the prerequisite of dragon custom. This paper outlines the family history from Qing-dynasty to the period of public.From a synchronic perspective, the custom of dragon dance in Zhangjiawan consists of three fundamental elements:faith in dragon, ceremonial process and artistic performance. Faith in dragon, lying in the core layer of dragon-dance-custom, reflects the local people's notion and feeling towards dragon. As a widespread religion, the belief of dragon have formed a common sense among people. But when people in different places interpreting its significance, the belief transforms form consensus to local knowledge transformation consensus. Zhangjiawan man's shenlong beliefs reflecting the relationships between consensus and local knowledge. The ritual process and art performance constitutes the phenomenon layer of Dragon Dance. The ceremony of dragon dance is formularized, being composed of "welcoming the dragon lantern—playing the dragon lantern—farewell to the dragon lantern". "Welcoming the dragon lantern" means inviting the dragon god, in whom the people of Zhangjiawan have faith, to their village, with their dragon lanterns possessed by the spirit of the dragon god. "Playing the dragon lantern" is to make a cruise to the neighboring villages, enjoying the sacrifice and giving performances at each incense table. "Farewell to the dragon lantern" refers to giving the dragon god a farewell party, asking the dragon to leave the lanterns and back to heaven. The ceremony of dragon dance possesses the following characteristics:born for art and co-exist with entertainment. The artistic performances are usually given at the intervals of ceremony, with the dragon dance at the core. Meanwhile, the performances also include other form of folk art, such as the song of the tea leaf pickers, running bamboo horse dance, lotus-thrashing, folk dance and so on.Form the perspective of historical changes, the custom of dragon dance in Zhangjiawan is always indicative of their internal needs. During the period of collectivization, people were still haunted, deep down in their hearts, by the trauma of war despite the fact that they had shaken off the state of being destitute and homeless. Therefore, villagers began to play the sacred dragon lantern, hoping the dragon god could change their unfortunate fates, soothe their souls and bring them courage to face the trauma of war. After the Cultural Revolution, people stepped into a new ear. The policy of reform and opening-up, like a spring breeze, has blown off the coldness in people's mind since the 1980s. The villagers felt that the days of being stricken with poverty, restriction and depression were long gone and would never return. Being eager for cultural life, the people of Zhangjiawan danced the dragon dance to celebrate Spring Festival, which was warmly welcomed by the local people. At that time, the public show with women as the pillar of art activities became a unique sight at the dragon lantern festival, showing the people's optimistic and confident attitude towards their future life. With the further development of market economy, the pros and cons of a commercialized era becomes all the more clearer in the twenty-first century. While the recreational life in private region was gradually enriching, the public cultural life of the villagers exhibited signs of decline. They began to reminisce the period of collectivization, and tried to re-find the collective-owned self from the public cultural activities. As a result, the traditional dragon dance became a way for them to return to the collective, by which they tried to prove that they still belonged to a cohesive community.This paper probes into the custom of dragon dance from the perspective of local knowledge, which not only provides us a vivid case, but also sheds some new light on the dragon dance, that is, associating the values of local people with the characteristics of the custom of dragon dance. Furthermore, to understand and illustrate the phenomenon of dragon dance from the perspective of folk culture is also emphasized in this paper. The author holds that the local dragon dance reflects the abundance of material life and the predicament of spiritual life there, and the spirit of being vigorous and prosperous of the dragon dance performer is a clear reflection of their great effort to shake off the predicament.
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