A foreign friend was taking photos for a delicate lion head

The first art gallery for lion and dragon dace was landed in Chancheng District, Foshan. Lion head is the intellectual property and the cultural symbol of Foshan. In recent years, the government has encouraged Foshan cultural development and pledged to put forward more incentives for museum development and intended to promote museum development this year.

The Lion and Dragon Dance Art Gallery is located in Lingnan Tiandi. The gallery covers a land of around 200m2 and displays approximate 400 artifacts of lion head ranging from traditional lion head featuring Liu Bei, to lion head added with innovative elements such as the lion head for the Great Wall Lion Dance and the lion head characterizing the First Emperor of the Qing Dynasty. Some of the lion heads with traditional Chinese painting style, demonstrate the landmarks and folk custom. Others were painted with traditional Chinese pavilions and corridors. All of them are fabulous and exquisite. The gallery provides traditional lion dance performance and besides, they also developed lion-dance-relevant outfits and artifacts such as phone protectors, ceramic dolls, hats, ect.

What is out of our expectation is that it is a group of young people who are in charge of the design and management of the gallery.

Yong Lu, the correspondent of the Lion and Dragon Dance Art Gallery stated that they had been preparing for this gallery for almost two years during which they had visited different schools of martial arts and world-wide prominent masters in making paper artifacts. The restoration in the gallery are from various places around the world including Malaysia, Canada and Singapore. Among them, there is a most oldest piece of lion head which can be traced back to the 1960s.

As for the reason to establish a cultural gallery for lion and dragon dance, Yong Lu said lion and dragon dace, as a representative figure of Lingnan culture, is needed to be carried and passed on. Adding innovative elements in traditional lion dacing cultures reactivates the conventional way of art appreciation therefore, appeals to more young generation to apprehend Lingnan traditional culture.

According to data from local government, there are about tens of thousands of folk collectors with billions of antique collections behind the spotlight remained unknown. Yan Tan, Deputy director of Foshan Culture and Sports Bureau said Chancheng District is planning to build a platform, which would invite folk collectors to launch regular expositions in diverse forms to showcase their delicate collections. It is going to be a musume where enthusiasm for art would never end.

Since the gallery opened, it has attracted many visitors from home and abroad

Address

No. 6 Zumiao Commercial Street, Foshan Lingnan Tiandi, Chancheng District, Foshan

(formerly located at Rensheng Yu Museum)

Opening hours

The lion and dragon heads is on display on both floor from Monday to Sunday every 9AM to 10 PM.

(Source: Foshan China)