Acrobatics Gymnastics has Over 2,500yeas of History in China

“History of Acrobatics”

Acrobatics have an over two-thousand five-hundred year history in China. Developing from

everyday life and work, the early skills presented in village harvest festivals have now evolved

into one of China’s national treasures. Building on these traditional performances, today’s

artists have added new techniques and spectacular stunts thrilling audiences around the globe.

Highly skilled, rigorously trained, and superbly talented, these performers follow an unbroken

tradition since 700 BC.

Ancient stone carvings, earthen pottery and early written works trace the ancestry of today’s

spectacular acts to an era long since vanished. Even Confucius’ father was an acrobat — a

strongman of unrivaled strength who, it is claimed, lifted 1,000 pound city gates to let an army

storm through.

Acrobats, with their amazing skill of strength and impossible balance, developed out of the

annual village harvest celebrations. Every year at the time of the lunar new-year the village’s

peasants and craftsmen would join in the village square in a celebration of a bountiful harvest

. . . a sort of Chinese Thanksgiving. It was at this time that the common people would show off

their skills by performing fun and exciting feats of daring and strength using household tools and

common items found around the farm and workshop.

Hoop Diving has it origins during the harvest time when the field workers used a tool shaped

like a large tambourine. These large hoops with a woven mesh bottom were used to shake and

divide the grain from the leaves and stems. It became a tradition, a challenge, to see who could

dive through these hoops and how many or how tall a stack through which they could dive.

Similarly, the pottery maker would learn to juggle and spin his wares. Spinning a pot to make

it uniformly round and smooth is a natural action of the potter. However, when he adds to this

a few tricks of juggling and tossing high into the air, he becomes a local hero performing a

thrilling feat.

Climbing to the top of a tall stack of chairs . . . the spinning of plates on the end of a long

bamboo stick . . . balancing small wooden benches on the head . . . flipping bowls with your feet

. . . climbing tall poles and long leather straps . . . these and most other traditional Chinese

acrobatic acts derived from the lifelong skills of the village peasant, river sailor and local

craftsman.

As skills developed, they passed them from generation to generation to become the feats of

strength, balance and grace that are this unique tradition of China. Like traveling European

gypsies, the great acrobatic families of China would entertain the city rulers and the village

people. Today there remain only a few brothers and sisters of the old and famous acrobatic

families. They have now organized China’s traditional entertainments into professional

acrobatic troupes with formal academies for training young promising entertainers and

internationally award winning performing companies.