documenting Chinese street performers
You never forget these kinds of itinerant street performers once you’ve seen them live. They present a mix of acrobatics, feats of endurance and strength, and qigong body control that allows them to do things like swallow a sword, or force a live snake through the mouth and out the nose. Such performances, related to martial arts, have been going on in China for a long, long time (apparently sword swallowing showed up from India in about 750 A.D.).
Netease BBS (163.com) has a photo series of two such young performers in Shenzhen. The photographer says:
It was February 18, the Lantern Festival, at about 3 pm…I saw this pair of young performers doing tricks like twisting steel around their necks, wire bursting, sword swallowing, and aerial somersaults. The scene reminded me of my childhood, when performers would come to the village every year. Those performances were a lot more complex than these, however, with performers bending backwards to nip a bowl with their teeth, and both “hard” and “soft” qiqong tricks…
Selected comments:
This is so sad.
These two kids ofen perform right outside my office. But there are so many of them in Shenzhen that nobody really pays any attention. Life isn’t easy…
I used to see a lot of this when I was little. I don’t understand why there are still so many of them.
Save the children!
Give them money!
When they grow up I’ll hire them as my bodyguards.
We should not be giving them money, but asking the government to help them.
Your photos are pretty good. But you don’t understand the situation. There’s definitely someone behind them who’s in control.
Why aren’t they in school? Why don’t the police pick them up?
link to photos and comments
link to chapter (in English) on Chinese “Juvenile Juggling” from 1901 book, The Chinese Boy and Girl
Chinese street performers
Over at the Virtual China blog, my Institute for the Future colleague Lyn Jefferey translates a post and comments she found on the Chinese language Netease BBS about young Chinese street performers. The boys whose photos appear in the post remind of I…
I saw the comment about the two boys that said:
We should not be giving them money, but asking the government to help them
I would rather take personal responsibility first, anything else is moral cowardice.
it’s not always that simple. One of those comments mentions that they are probably under the control of a “supervisor”, and if you give them money, you merely encourage the overlords to work them even more. This way, the kids are no better off. I remember hearing from friends who went to asia that in some places there’d be mobs of children selling flowers, but the tourist guides would encourage you NOT to buy them.
Alternate explanation of child street performers as explained by my H.K. national friend. This does not apply to these particular photos, or individual situations. But, here’s a little history concerning the origin of this kind of street performance.
My friend says, “This is a custom for poor people. Usually families, generally with some martial art background of skills… family art, will go out in the streets and have their children/themselves perform interesting qigong or kungfu forms and then try to sell their homebrew Kung-Fu medicine… Deet Da Jau. This is more common during war times through the last 2,000 years in China. They were trying to use the skills they had during times of recession.”
Maus, that’s interesting. Some of the comments did praise the kids for their skills, and thought perhaps with more training they might become professional acrobats…or assassins.