Dongbeizhuang, a small town under the administration of
Puyang
City, is the “
Land of
Acrobatics”. Dongbeizhuang and Wuqiao in
Hebei province are called the two hometowns of Chinese acrobatics.
Almost
everyone in Dongbeizhuang likes acrobatics. Man or woman, old or young,
everybody can show some skills. Youngsters would succeed their parents’
career and the whole family would come into this trade, so the custom
of performing acrobatics has lasted. Now nearly 30 famous acrobats has
retired and come back to their hometown, where they could spread their
skills in schools, thus the acrobatics skill of Dongbeizhuang has become
more and more excellent, and more and more people become fond of this
art.
It
has been more than 300 years since the people there began to practice
acrobatics, and in the mid-Qing dynasty, this custom was in full bloom.
At the end of Qing dynasty, acrobats in the town accounted for 80% of
the total people there. Among the 13 professional acrobatics troupes,
the most famous one is the Qiao Family Troupe, which consists of over 50
people and is headed by Qiao Jiaqing, having given performances in
Russia,
Japan,
Korea,
India,
Philippines and so on.
As one of the three most famous acrobatics schools in
China,
Puyang
Acrobatics
School trains skillful talents for 80% of
acrobatics performing organizations throughout the country. In 1997,
Dongbeizhuang set up the
Puyang
Local
Acrobatics
Development
Center to send acrobats to foreign lands. Now, this center has three fixed performance sites, namely, Puyang,
Shenzhen
Happy
Valley and Disneyland in
America. Currently about 500 people of
Dongbeizhuang give acrobatic performances all the year round away from
home in 27 provinces or cities in China, and 37 people act as the head
of the acrobatics troupes at home and abroad. Acrobats from
Dongbeizhuang could be found in the acrobatics organizations of around
41 countries such as
Korea,
Japan and
Germany. In 1999, the Disneyland of
America invested more than US$ 0.4 million to construct an acrobatics
show hall with an area of
5,000 square meters in the Green Park of Puyang, and there are all kinds of performances every day. In 2000, the Puyang
municipality
approved
Dongbeizhuang as the key traveling spot and invested a large sum of
fund to construct the acrobatics hall and the outdoor performance site.
It has become one of the highlights of
Henan tourism.
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