Culture of Yunan County
Liantan Town in Yunan County is the hometown of Chinese folk art. In 2000, it was approved by the State Council as a national small town comprehensive reform pilot town. There are rich cultural activities such as Liantan folk art, eight music, lion and dragon dance, martial arts, paper crafts, finger painting art and so on.
It is said that the Liantan Folk Art Festival began during the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, spread to the Qing Dynasty, and reached its peak during the Republic of China. Every year on the 20th day of the first lunar month, the birthday of Duke Zhang is celebrated as a festival, also known as the "Temple Fair". The local people built the Zhanggong Temple to commemorate the achievements of Zhang Gong (the founding father), and designated the 20th day of the first lunar month of his birth as the "Temple Fair", which later developed into the "Temple Festival" and "Art Festival". An annual folk art festival is held, and spontaneous mass sacrificial activities during the birthdays of historical celebrities, festivals, and temple fairs are incorporated into new cultural and entertainment activities. Every year on the 20th day of the first lunar month, Zhang Yuanxun’s birthday, people from the old Sanluo (Luoding, Yunfu, and Yunan) communities spontaneously gathered in front of the temple to hold folk activities such as singing folk songs, burning iron cannons, and setting off fireworks. Now it has been upgraded to a grand gathering of folk culture in the entire Xijiang River Basin, and the unique ethnic minority dance "Helou Dance" has also been revived at the art festival. This dance once showed the joys and sorrows of an ethnic minority. It was resurrected hundreds of years later and became a festive note during the Lantern Festival.
In recent years, Yunan County has actively responded to the strategic deployment of the Provincial Party Committee and the Provincial Government on creating a cultural province, and has proposed a new cultural construction idea of "promoting folk art and creating Nanjiang culture", which will continue to The Yunan Liantan Folk Art Festival, which has been held for ten times, has become bigger and stronger, making the art festival a new cultural brand of the county and well-known both inside and outside the province. During the art festival from the 15th to the 20th of the first lunar month, there are folk performances every day, including lion dance, dragon dance, folk song duet, finger painting, martial arts, acrobatics, fireworks and the ancient folk dance Helou dance and other folk arts. Performed continuously, the sumptuous literary and artistic feast dazzled the people of Liantan Town and the surrounding villages, which is known as the "Hometown of Chinese Folk Art Festival". The art parade on the 20th of the first lunar month pushed the entire folk art festival to a climax. . Liantan folk art has a long history. It is the birthplace of Liantan folk songs spread in Guangdong, Guangxi, three cities and six counties. It has been deeply loved by the masses for four hundred years. Folk singers not only sing for their own entertainment after work, but also often gather in squares and stages. Sing and use folk songs to coordinate various government work to carry out publicity. Various folk art parades such as Cantonese music, Cantonese opera, and Piaose are also very popular, which add a lot of joy to people's lives.