What is Aoyu Dance like?

Aoyu dance is an ancient folk dance in Panyu. The local famous Shawan Piao Se is usually held together with the Aoyu Dance. In front of the floating color, there are often two big octopus dancing.

This fish dance is said to have a history of more than 300 years. In the past, whenever there was a bumper harvest or a festive festival, people would play fish dance. After floating color, combine floating color activities to help each other.

The legend of Aoyu is a kind of sacred fish, the dragon head fish body and carp swallowing dragon balls by mistake. The earthquake happened in the blink of an eye and collapsed as soon as it was turned over. People have always been in awe of it.

In the past, people used bamboo sticks to make fish images, pasted them on paper and painted them with colorful colors, which were regarded as gods. Later, it was used for dancing.

When dancing, you will blow the horn, and wherever people go, they will burn cannons to show good luck. Over time, it developed into a fish dance with a set of procedures. Dancers hold octopus on their heads with their hands, jumping up and down and swinging left and right like lions, imitating the movements of octopus in the water, licking their faces, mating and scattering eggs, which is very realistic and full of the flavor of water town life.

Fish dance is the development of fish lantern dance. When dancing, there must be a pair of fish, one female and one male, one gold and one silver. The male fish has a gorgeous tail, the female fish has a silver scale and a pheasant, and the other person plays Wen Quxing, which is equivalent to the big head Buddha when dancing lions.

Various towns and villages in Panyu also have the habit of winning the championship with Australian feather dance. People form a team of 20 or 30 people, carrying octopus across the village to perform, to see who has a beautiful and elegant shape and a beautiful and realistic dance, and more importantly, who can dance this 4-foot-long octopus head with a weight of 10 kg until the firecrackers burn out.

Sometimes, fishing teams from various towns gather in a village square, dancing from day to midnight, and firecrackers ring from dawn to dark. In the middle of the night, the exhausted people quit automatically, and the one who sticks to the end is the winner.