On December 15th, a stilting art performance was held in Qinglong Village as an effort to establish Longquan Town, Yiling District, as “the Hometown of Chinese Stilting Art”. Many leaders and experts from cultural and sport departments at the national, provincial, municipal and district levels gathered there to watch the performance.

　　Longquan has a rich folk culture root with various traditional folk arts, including stilting, lion dance and dragon lantern dance, among which stilting is the most unique one. It boasts five major expression forms, including stilting flower-drum dance, stilting flower-drum opera, stilting lion dance, stilting martial arts and stilting dragon dance.

　　In 2014, “Longquan Town’s Stilting Lion Dance” was listed as a “Yiling District Intangible Cultural Heritage”; in 2015, Longquan Town was named by the Provincial Bureau of Sports as “the Hometown of Lion Dance and Dragon Dance in Hubei Province”, and by the Provincial Folk Literature and Art association as “the Hometown of Stilting Art in Hubei Province”; in 2016, it was boosted by a national effort to establish itself as “the Hometown of Stilting Art”; in 2017, “Longquan Stilting” was enlisted in “Yichang Municipal Intangible Cultural Heritage List”.

　　In order to inherit and celebrate these splendid folk arts in a better way, the town party committee and government have been constantly exploring, organizing, inhering and exchanging the art of stilting since 1993. Currently, there are 1316 stilting performers, 1 stilting inheritance base, and 2 training institutes in Longquan. Stilting art has also been passed on to the high school and primary school students, making its way into school campus. Longzhen Primary School and Longquan Middle School have listed stilting in their featured courses, with the aims to cultivate more inheritors, extend the inheritance scope, and increase the intensity of inheritance. (Reporter Huang Xiang, correspondent Cao Wenqian)