Peacock Dance - Yang Liping

Purple Moon Crying in the Rain

Kunming. The old city is now gone. Wood, stone and tile houses have been smashed, obliterated and covered with cement. For some it is economic progress, for others, the uprooting of their roots. I followed the address San Bao gave me, to a non-descript building. I cannot remember, it could have been a factory which seemed to have been converted into a school. I was to discover it was a half built theatre. I stood outside looking at the cement walls and smudged glass windows. It was raining in the parking lot.

I heard the sound of chanting. It rang through my ears with a piercing sound like a call from wilderness, the cry of a purple moon in rain. It haunted the recesses of my thoughts. The echo reverberated for a time which could not be measured by the sound of breath. I followed the sound up four flights of cement stairs and entered a dance studio. The children stood on both sides, their tiny bodies draped in traditional clothing of their village. It had been sewn three generations ago, passed from grandmother, to mother, to daughter. They were proud of their clothes. They were unaware of my presence. They were singing.

I found Yang Liping, China’s legendary dance performer, sitting on the floor against a mirror wall of her studio, back pressed against the mirror. Village girls singing were reflected in the mirror, in the sun glasses of Yang Liping. Her hair was braided Tibetan style, laced with chunks of turquoise with coral, and she wore a red Chinese jacket with the sleeves torn off. They had been just torn, and the edges were frayed. She asked me if I wanted to listen. She indicated, before I speak with her, that I should listen to the children sing. This was a pre-requisite to qualify me for discussion. So I sat on the wooden studio floor beside Yang Liping. She said nothing. We listened. The children sang.

When listening to village voices, one should not sit in a chair. It is best to sit upon the floor, legs crossed, squarely and firmly in touch with the solidity beneath you. I asked Yang Liping about the philosophy of sitting cross-legged on the floor and listening to children sing.

“Regardless of philosophy or art,” she explained, “this is related to the lifestyle and environment of Yunnan, which is inseparable from nature and the very basis of life. This is not empty talk philosophy. Ethnic minorities pray to the sun. This is their philosophy. The sun is fire. They do not know about science. They just know that fire is a necessity of life. So they know that they need fire and the sun is fire. If the warmth of your personality is like fire, if your dreams are like fire, they will burn. If your love is like fire burning, you can understand the depth of this rational through the simple expression of dance.”

She then pointed to the children dancing, their movement like spring flowers awakening after rain, autumn leaves blowing in cool wind. “They must retain the entire composure of their dance,” she explained pointing with long thin white fingernails spreading them with her fingers like an unfolding fan. “They use their entire heart in their dance. This is not a job, it is not an assignment, but an essential necessity. When they are happy, say upon getting married, they dance. When the old die and they have a funeral for the old, they dance again. When they go to the fields to plant rice seeds they sing. When they collect the harvest, they sing. Dance in its essential form is like this.”

“When you were young was it your intention to become a dancer?” I asked her, pointing to the children dancing and chanting before us.

“I never went to dance school,” she confided. “But in the school of life I have felt and have searched for what life is all about and come to express this. Through this there is meaning. It is not just putting music on and dancing to music. This has no meaning. I am now in the Central Ethnic Dance Troupe, my career is there. But I do not plan to stay on the stage dancing and singing. I sometimes think about my childhood, dancing alongside the river. In the village, dance is more natural. Now we must perform as a matter of work. But my composure is still that of before.” She pointed to the children chanting, enveloped in village tradition. “Once you have left your roots, you have lost it. You will become light without strength, nothing behind to support you. In the end, you will not even be yourself.”

“You yourself are like the children you now teach from the village. You did not study dancing but have become China’s greatest modern performing dancer. You even created your own style, your own school of dance. Your Peacock Dance is famous, recognized around the world. How were you able to do this without professional training?”

“Most of mankind depends on their mouth to express feelings, feelings toward nature, toward the things in life around them. From childhood my language was dance. If I speak my feelings toward life, you may not understand because I cannot use words to express my feelings. My most direct language is the language of motion. Some people may ask how language can become expressed in dance. I can only explain that I have found the best form of language for me.”

The children continued to sing. They moved like stalks of rice in fields, being blown by a wind which finds its breath in the transition between late summer and early autumn, a time which passes by without being observed. “You must see which angle you view ethnic dance from,” Yang Liping continued pointing with her long white fingernails at the girls moving in shuffles across the dance floor. “Natural environment is the basic source of life. This kind of dance which is associated with the basic elements of life is inseparable from ethnic people themselves. You must respect them and know that this is the most pure and precious of things. It is not my technique in performing the Peacock and Moon dances which has given me acclaim, it the correct expression of those things of value to a culture which has. We are not a museum.”

I thought about Kunming today, different from the Kunming I knew twenty years ago wandering through cobbled, tree lined streets wrapping around wood and stone shop houses of another century. Now that is gone forever. I could not find the address of Yang Liping’s school because everything in the city looked the same, just blobs of cement. “But if the spirit of a culture is the basis of expression, how can expression be retained in art if the culture is in danger of extinction?” I asked.

“In this kind of future we will lose this kind of natural way of living,” Yang Liping sighed shaking her head. “Because now many ethnic groups do not sing, do not dance, they live in cement buildings covered with bathroom tiles, and have a modern lifestyle. They are absorbed by many materialistic hopes. They will lose their original self. It will be gone. We must work to maintain this. But we cannot organize and force them not to lose this, because everyone will want to live a modern life. While they should protect and keep what is theirs, we cannot force them to do this. So the most rational way to do this is to quickly grasp these things which are about to be lost and find a way to keep them. In another one hundred years the villages will not exist, the people will be gone. They will be the same as ethnic Chinese. Maybe on stage or in a museum you will be able to see what they were, maybe in the end, we will only be able to save just this little.”


Yang Liping explained how she had been traveling for months to the most remote villages of Yunnan Province, searching for traditional songs and dances being performed in their original state. The children she brought back to Kunming as her students were all from these villages. In fact, they were not performers at all, but village children. Their song and dance was only part of natural village life.

“They do not have any written language or technique to keep records of their dance or culture,” Yang Liping explained. “How your mother teaches you is how you dance or sew. It is entirely an oral tradition. Their music has no fixed foundation. You hear them sing and it sounds so good, all four tones together in harmony. But they have no composed music, no conductor. It is not composed, but comes together as if it was. It is their own natural sound which comes together in a harmony which cannot be composed because it is their true natural expression. This is the same with their dance. Look at their clothes. It is hand sewn, with thought. There is no way to write this down and record it, because it is part of their natural life.”

“Then these arts are in serious danger of being lost, and soon.”

“These songs and dances are now only a few. Yunnan is not bad in that due to poor transportation the natural life of people has been affected less than in other places. It is a border region, a mountain region. There are places where we cannot drive, so we walk. These places are better. But soon they will be gone. The government does not stop developing new roads, and it does not stop developing tourism. This creates new influences changing village life. Young men do not like wearing traditional clothes, they prefer jeans. Moreover, it requires people like me to now search and find their traditions and bring them out, to dust off what is there and make it clean again.” Yang Liping pointed out that in bringing dances and songs from the villages to her dance school, she was preserving the traditions intact, bringing out the best, not engaging in re-choreography. “Somebody has to do this. If there is too much dust covering the beauty of these traditions and they cannot be seen, then we have the responsibility to clean it off and make it clear. Just as if a tree is standing before you. You cannot cut it. You should only trim it so it is better looking. Take away the excessive and that tree will stand beautiful. It is also natural. It was always there. It was not cross-bred to look good.”

“In a way you are rushing to preserve your own heritage,” I asked. “Isn’t that what this is all about?”

“In my bones I respect basic things. When you create a dance, it should naturally accord with the meaning of the dance. The internal meaning and structure of a piece of art must be in harmony with itself. There cannot be a piece of outer skin which carries a lot of unrelated things. I am strongly against this. What is modern? Tell me! It is not just wearing jeans and eating McDonalds. It is not just using an electronic music synthesizer.” She pointed to the village girls rehearsing on the floor before us. “You can see their dance is very modern because a modern sense of meaning is implicitly within. Look at the color of their clothing. A French fashion designer can only come this far, but cannot exceed what they have. Yes, just because his color design is very modern and fashionable, you cannot dismiss what they have as ethnic and antique. The point is that their intention and ideas are modern. If so it does not matter what you are wearing. Their music is modern. The problem is can you understand it? It is not that you say you are modern or you wear something which is modern. Do you have the ability to appreciate their modernity? On stage you may be looking for modern technology and lighting effect to give color, this is only an external matter, but do they have modernity within their spirit? You cannot say they are backward. This kind of spirit we want to express and let others come to know. Healthy, composed, beautiful. This is philosophy and art which all mankind can understand. Look at the composer San Bao. His music and style is modern and beautiful. But when he came to see the performance of my student here, he broke into tears. Why? Because he realized this was music in its original purity. He cried because upon hearing them, he discovered the beauty of music, how it moves others. Dance was originally a total expression, not a fulfillment of duty. He has seen too many performances which were for the sake of completing an assignment, seen too many, performances for money, for a purpose. But this moved him because it was purely for the spirit of expression of inner self.”

“Yes, San Bao said, if I come to Yunnan in Search of Shangri-la, I must first search out you!”

“From childhood my grandmother taught me – of course she did not use the term Shangri-la – as our ethnic group uses the term Mo Li Ye Na. Later, after I grew up, I understood. In fact the idea is the same. It is a question of differences in language. Westerners call it Shangri-la. Chinese call it a ‘Peach Garden beyond the realm’. At the Yulong Snow Mountain [Lijiang] they talk about a ‘third world’, Shangri-la. Many young boys and girls are not afraid to die. They actually believe in dying, because it is a natural phenomena. After love, the couples will climb the Yulong Snow Mountain and jump off to their death, because they are going into the third realm of Yulong, to Shangri-la. When they go to the third realm of Shangri-la they believe that this realm is the best, so they are not afraid to die. After death they will go to an even better place. They are romantic. They are not like Chinese who feel that after death you become dust and it is sad. They are not like this. They believe that after a person dies, they will go to the third realm. It is very romantic. It is not that they are not afraid, they are idealistic. Just like Tibetans turning a prayer wheel. After death they will return and it will be better. This hope allows them to go through the realities of this world with happiness. Look at the Tibetans. So what if life is somewhat bitter? Because the environment they live in is harsh, the air thin, no oxygen, freezing cold, it is a difficult place to live. So you must have hope, your own hope, like Shangri-la. If your hope is built on this, you will not be afraid of death. They are not afraid of the bitterness in their life. The future will be better. They live in a dreamlike world, not a clear precise world like you do. You want to find out precisely what and where Shangri-la is, to define it and tell others. But they are in a dream and for them this dream is Shangri-la.

“You are also a Bai ethnic minority, from Dali, right?” I asked. “Some say Dali is Shangri-la. Others say Lijiang or Zhongdian. Regardless, is Shangri-la here in Yunnan? What do you really think?”

“Our ethnic Bai minority believe in every person’s soul, so there is a culture of wizardry, communicating with the dead, with the soul. They know there is lots of empty space for communication, only in the spirit, in the ideal. Why are Yunnan people so gentle? You must ask yourself this question. Because our environment is so nice, clear water, green mountains, great natural outdoors, so their lifestyle is very happy. They can sing, dance and culture is rich. They won’t get angry and frustrated. On the mountains you will often see a woman carrying huge bundles of scrap wood, bigger than the woman herself, climbing the mountain trail, twisting threads for spindling busily being sewn in her hands as she walks, with the naturalness with which we might drive and use the mobile telephone. She accepts this and does not have any anger toward this life. She thinks that I since I have such a life, I must give birth, have many children and let life multiply. It is a very natural attitude toward life.”

“Then you follow a philosophy of a natural attitude toward life, both in your life and dance. Is that right? The naturalness of your dance is an expression of your philosophy toward life?”

“One must first ‘sense’ and then ‘realize’. Many people have sense but no realization. For instance, in dance, you can say you studied a lot, you watched a lot, you feel that dance is good, but when you try yourself, you cannot express yourself. In such a case there is sensation but no realization. Your body cannot realize expression. You can only feel good but not express it. Many people have gone to many universities and have lots knowledge and experience, but they cannot write a good novel. Many students have studied lots of dance, but cannot dance well. To realize or awaken is realization, to have vision to see and then to do. It is not that you can only see but not do. This effects dance, fashion, even film. Does that camera focus capture that particular meaning intended? This is important. Can it completely express it? Ask yourself! Dance is like that. This is something which cannot be taught. It can only be within your own self. If you practice without desire or feeling, then it is useless. If you have desire and feeling, and you have realization, then you can achieve it.”

Feeling -- comprehension -- realization? I wondered to myself. “Maybe then the search for Shangri-la is not about a place, but about feeling and comprehension?” I asked.

“If your intention is to find Shangri-la but your way is all messed up, if you hurt or kill people on the way, then how can you find Shangri-la? From your heart there is no Shangri-la but only from your mouth you say you are looking for it, you want to find a happy life, but you do not create that happy life, don’t you realize that a happy life must be created. There are two directions. One is realism, while another is your spirit and attitude. If you think I must definitely find a spiritual Shangri-la and make a very ideal atmosphere, the result being that what you do is all messed up, then the spirit is false. You do not have any belief, so you do not know what that Shangri-la is all about. You talk about living happy days, but you don’t go out and create that happy life, then you will not be happy. This is the difference between realism and spirit. If you want to fix Shangri-la at any particular place, then you will lose the meaning of Shangri-la, because Shangri-la is without place. You cannot use one place or one product to represent Shangri-la. Therefore, Shangri-la cannot be said to be in Zhongdian, it cannot be fixed in Lijiang, because Lijiang is quite beautiful and people say that this could possibly be the place of Shangri-la, that book’s author was searching for a lost Shangri-la. No place can represent Shangri-la. Only spirit can. Lijiang and Zhongdian are Shangri-la. Are they the most beautiful places? They are only places where the natural environment has been protected quite well, so you might think that they are Shangri-la.”

“So you are saying neither Li Jiang or Zhongdian are Shangri-la either?” I asked quite taken back by her words.

“To really find a place, this is meaningless,” she warned, raising one thin white fingernail, unfolding the other delicate fingers, spreading her hand like a white fan. “We can only search for it. We can seek it in what is beautiful. Already from the perspective of spirit, we have found it. In Yunnan there are many places where you can feel Shangri-la and have this feeling. But to say you can completely find it is impossible. The Peach Garden of Chinese legend does not exist. The movement of dance can achieve a beautiful appearance from the dance moves. Because of the effect dance has upon you, so yourself can be affected. Music and clothing might be beautiful. If beautiful then this is Shangri-la. There are writers who have come back and said there is no Shangri-la, as it has been destroyed. So they can only go and look further.”

So I went to look further. I would follow her directions to see for myself, traveling to Lijiang, then to Zhongdian, the two counties claiming to be Shangri-la. When I left Yang Liping’s studio, I could hear lingering voices of village children. They were still singing. As I traveled to Lijiang, to Zhongdian, hitchhiking along the network of roads which wound past villages, through valleys and up into mountains, I could still hear their echo clinging to my memory, haunting internal recesses of meditation upon smooth lake waters waiting to be touched. The purity of village children chanting had been captured for a moment and held in Yang Liping’s vision, a call from wilderness, the crying of a purple moon in rain. I was reminded to stop for a moment before sacred snow capped mountains, wait, listening for snow to melt.