In Anshun Dixi, the carved mask is worn above the performer’s face, at the forehead. Cloth around the head and the lifted painted features create a figure whose outline can be read across an open performance space. In use, the carved face moves with a body and a voice, answering the other performers. The character arrives through their combination: painted features held high, the performer’s steps below, and a sung story carried between them.
From the journal
The face above the face
Anshun Dixi brings carved masks, sung military tales and village companies into a tradition connected with the Tunpu settlements.
In the same city · Anshun ↗
A face carried high
A company belongs to a place
The national heritage account connects Dixi with the military settlers who formed the Tunpu communities in the early Ming. Village companies carry stories of generals and campaigns through singing and stylised movement, with gong and drum accompaniment. The dramatic world has familiar heroes, but the work of staging them is local: people learn parts, maintain objects and perform together. The village is therefore part of the form, not merely scenery behind a stage.
Who holds a village company together
The heritage account describes village companies of roughly twenty or thirty performers, organised by a shentou. A leader sings and others answer; one gong and one drum mark the action. The repertoire draws on stories such as the Yang family generals, Yue Fei and the Three Kingdoms, whose characters can be recognised through costume, weapons and the carved face. New Year and the seventh lunar month, when rice flowers, are named traditional occasions. That agricultural setting gives the theatre a calendar as well as a script: the same people who work in a village also gather to carry its dramatic stories.
A living performance has several settings
Anshun’s official account of the 2025 Spring Festival documents performances in villages, urban public spaces and Tianlong Tunpu’s visitor setting. These contexts give Dixi different audiences. They also make change visible: a festival, a village occasion and a presentation for visitors need not be identical. The connection to Ming settlement remains meaningful without describing present-day Tunpu people as survivors sealed outside history. The theatre is made again whenever people organise its performance.