"Dance of Bull Fighting Against Tiger" is a of folk dance
popular in Ongnigod Banner of Chi Feng City in Inner Mongolia. It
is performed by four people, among whom two act as a bull(one as
bull's head, the other as the bull's tail), one acts as a tiger and
the last one acts as a woodcutter.
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The performance includes four stages: first, the bull, the tiger
and the woodcutter come onto stage together to form a triangle;
second, the bull fights against the tiger; third, the bull and the
tiger lie down to have a rest; fourth, the bull fights against the
tiger fiercely and then the quick-witted woodcutter fights against
the tiger by trickery and beats it to death. The dance has been
spread for nearly a hundred years. According to a legend, in the
ancient times there lived a red-haired tiger near Ulaanban Village
and it often came to the village to cause disturbance. So this
place was once called "Ulaan Bar" which means "red tiger" in
Mongolian. The people who suffered a lot from the tiger decided to
collaborate to fight the tiger and finally succeeded in beating it
to death. Afterwards, the villagers invented a dance imitating a
bull's fight against a tiger to celebrate the victory. Later, with
the arrival of many new migrants, new movements have been added to
the dance, such as "somersaulting", which give highlight to the
bull-fighter's distinguished moral qualities: brave, quick-witted
and strong-minded.