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Reconnecting to the Great Civilisation: The Strategy of Revitalising the Hakka Unicorn Dance in Hong Kong’s Hang Hau through the Intangible Cultural Heritage System

Tik-sang Liu
p. 79-88

Abstract

The Hakka unicorn dance, with reference to mythical animals in the great Chinese tradition, was developed by the Hakka people in Guangdong for religious and societal purposes. This dancing tradition was brought by Hakka migrants to Hong Kong in the eighteenth century. Most Hakka villages established their own unicorn dance troupes to serve the needs of their local village communities. Since the 1960s, however, this local tradition has been under the threat of vanishing due to the loss of young players and the rapid urbanisation process. With the Hakka unicorn dance in Hang Hau, Hong Kong, being named as an item on the Chinese national list of intangible cultural heritage in 2014, an opportunity to conserve the unicorn dance became available to the villagers. In the process of revitalisation, the Hakka villagers emphasised the authentic cultural meanings of their unicorn dance and defined their tradition as an inherently Chinese one that aligned with the national framework.

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Editor’s notes

Manuscript received on 7 September 2022. Accepted on 15 May 2023.

Excerpt

Full text document will be published online on September 2024.

Outline

Introduction
Unicorn dance turns ICH
Hakka migrants in Hang Hau
A unicorn with different appearances
Unicorn dance in Hang Hau
How to dance a unicorn
Essential dancing rules
(i) Greeting
(ii) A low gesture
(iii) The left as the superior side
(iv) Visiting sacred places
(v) Reading the couplet
(vi) Generating a coin
(vii) Creating a knot and unknotting
(viii) Flattening the edges
(ix) Plucking the greens
A total organisation for small villages
A vanishing tradition
Connecting to the great civilisation
Conclusion

First lines

Introduction

The Hakka unicorn dance in Hang Hau, Hong Kong, was named as an item on the Chinese national list of intangible cultural heritage in 2014, indicating the dance as an important cultural heritage to be safeguarded. The attainment of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) status was considered to be a great achievement by local Hakka villagers, who had been worried about the gradual vanishing of their ancestral tradition in modern times. The naming of the Hakka unicorn dance in Hong Kong as a national ICH item followed the Chinese government’s joining of UNESCO’s initiative of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (hereafter ICH Convention). As part of China’s larger ICH project, the Hong Kong government began to safeguard ICH in Hong Kong in 2006 (Chau 2011; Liu 2011a, 2011b, 2021; Chan 2018), while at the same time nominating their local items to be included on Beijing’s national list (Kuah and Liu 2016). The criteria and process for Hong Kon...

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References

Bibliographical reference

Tik-sang Liu, Reconnecting to the Great Civilisation: The Strategy of Revitalising the Hakka Unicorn Dance in Hong Kong’s Hang Hau through the Intangible Cultural Heritage SystemChina Perspectives, 134 | 2023, 79-88.

Electronic reference

Tik-sang Liu, Reconnecting to the Great Civilisation: The Strategy of Revitalising the Hakka Unicorn Dance in Hong Kong’s Hang Hau through the Intangible Cultural Heritage SystemChina Perspectives [Online], 134 | 2023, Online since 01 September 2024, connection on 06 December 2023. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/15895; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/chinaperspectives.15895

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About the author

Tik-sang Liu

Dr Tik-sang Liu is Associate Professor Emeritus in the Division of Humanities at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong (hmtsliu@ust.hk).

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Copyright

The text and other elements (illustrations, imported files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.

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