‧ Chinese Name: 吳登興
‧ Born: 1981
‧ Place of Birth: Yunlin County (Southern Taiwan)
Did You Know?
In addition to being good at making lion heads for lion dances, Wu Teng-hsing is also a lantern artist. He has been appointed by Taipei's Longshan Temple to make large-scale lanterns each year for 17 consecutive years. Every year, his work is amazing, attracting countless tourists from home and abroad, along with masses of media reports. Making lanterns, one must take into account a variety of techniques and technologies, including structure, aesthetics, and electrical wiring.
Wu Teng-hsing was born in Beigang, Yunlin, to a family with a history of involvement in temple entertainment. His father, Wu Yen-lin (吳炎林), was the fourth-generation head of Deyitang (德義堂), a famous century-old martial arts school. Although Wu Teng-hsing began to perform with his father at the age of four, the elder Wu did not want his son to follow the same path in the future. However, Wu Teng-hsing found he had a profound love of performing in tin-thau (陣頭) arrays, known as religious processional troupes, and was even more eager to learn how to make lion heads. When he was a child, he says, had little confidence because his father was always calling him "low." But driven by his love for lion dance, Wu was unwilling to give up, deciding that no matter whether or not he had a natural gift for it, he should be able to do well with hard work. His childhood memories are thus largely about practicing martial arts, making props, learning skills, and practicing hard. During this process, Wu’s skills developed rapidly, and he realized that he was actually quite talented.
"Lion dancing is a folk tradition with a long history. Over time, different regions have developed their own particular styles, as well as lion heads that look completely unlike one another," said Wu. Longfeng lion ensemble (龍鳳獅陣) is a lion ensemble unique to Taiwan. It is also an art ensemble with a unique heritage, having been passed down through Beigang's Deyitang martial arts school. Their performances consist of a dragon and a phoenix together with Taiwanese lions performed with accompaniment from traditional musical instruments. One of the important performance ensembles around the Mazu Temple of Chaotian Temple in Beigang, it is also one of Taiwan's most special temple fair lion formations. However, a full performance is complex and requires a division of labor among a large number of people, and this challenge, combined with a lack of systematic passing down of the tradition in the past, has led to a lack of a systematic recollection of it, with the line of inheritance having been broken at times and nearly lost.
The dragon-phoenix-lions array is a distinctive formation that only survives in Taiwan. In 1929, Taiwanese painter Shi Yu-shan (施玉山) painted the dragon, phoenix, and lion formation in front of Chaotian Temple in Beigang. Although there are also historical records of the formation in China, no one has ever seen it with their own eyes. Today, only Wu Teng-hsing has received complete training in this art, from prop production to performance. Not wanting this piece of folk heritage to perish, since taking the reins at Deyitang, he has headed up the Chinese Longfeng Lion Ensemble Cultural and Sports Federation, working to promote the art and other lion dance skills he has studied for more than 30 years.
Wu has gone to various schools to offer lessons, taking students to participate in competitions all over Taiwan. He has also been invited to give lectures in Thailand by the Hokkien Association in Nakhon Sawan, Thailand. "Overseas Chinese in Thailand have preserved lion-dancing culture, but have no one left who can teach the art," he says. The withering of cultural heritage and the disconnection from teachers forced the president of the association to seek suitable teachers from all over the world.
"The president said he had watched YouTube videos about lion dance all over the world and thought I was the best, so he personally came to Taiwan and invited me to teach." For Wu, no matter what form it is, as long as he can promote Taiwan's unique dragon-phoenix-lion culture so that more people can see the beauty of lion dance performances, he will give his all. So far, the number of students on and off the island has exceeded 3,000.
Wu says he's never been much for studying but driven by his love of lion dance, he has worked hard to understand all the various obtuse laws, regulations, papers, and documents relevant to the art, and even spent a lot of time writing proposals regarding historical sites and cultural relics in Beigang. Ten kinds of historical cultural relics have been registered as tangible cultural heritage, and he has also assisted many senior craftsmen with traditional skills to be registered as preservers of intangible cultural heritage, working together with them to preserve Taiwan's rich and precious traditional folk culture.
"If no one proposes that these cultural assets should be preserved, future generations may not even know that they ever existed." Wu Teng-hsing's love for traditional culture has motivated him to become a historian and archaeologist, of a sort. Graduate students of cultural heritage even often come see him for internships and research.
Wu hopes that future generations will be able to see the art of lion dance not only in literature and movies, but that, with his contribution, the techniques and production processes involved in Taiwan’s dragon-phoenix-lion performances will continue to be passed on long into the future.
(Photo courtesy of Department of Cultural Affairs and Tourism, Yunlin County Government)