Analysis. Shandong Qingzhou Xiaqin, Park, Hui Village Longevity Light Existence

FUSHOU Lantern Dance is a Chinese (Han) cultural performance mostly practiced during the Spring Festival in the Hui Village located in Xia Qinyuan of Qing Zhou City, Shandong Province. Local residents perform FUSHOU Lantern Dance from year to year for social assembling and cultural enlightenment.This paper begins with an analysis of the origin and development of FUSHOU Lantern Dance so as to sort out its evolution patterns. After that the paper examines the detailed fieldwork conducted by the author during the performance and other first-hand materials collected from local performers before and after the show. Based on the analysis, the paper then proposes that FUSHOU Lantern Dance, as a form of dancing art, is not originally created by local residents but rather an adaptation of some opera or a transplantation of other art forms. This finding explains the fact that when the Hui people in Xia Qinyuan performs FUSHOU Lantern Dance, they do not value the cultural connotations originally endowed in it as much as they do on the social effects the performance yields.In order to explain why FUSHOU Lantern Dance still exists as a form of dancing art, the author applies several research methods, including literature review, filed work, comparative analysis, inter-disciplinary research, etc. In field research, the author builds a rich database of audio and visual materials about FUSHOU Lantern Dance, such as interview recordings of performers, videotaping of performing shows and other first hand materials reserved by local residents. Taking a folk dance perspective, the author makes a systematic analysis of the features and logs of FUSHOU Lantern dance, Flower basket Dance and Land boat Dance, so as to explore the historical origin and development of FUSHOU Lantern Dance. This paper also probes into the dilemma it is faced with and proposes ways for its future development.