Circus Acts and the Animal Plays
2 min readThe expression “circus acts”first appeared in the Han dynasty referring to the various acts performed by the man riding a horse. Nowadays the expression has assumed an expanded meaning and it refers to the acrobatic acts performed by the wel1-trained animals, such as the black bear, the horse, the monkey and the dog, that is, the animal plays become a subcategory of the circus acts. For the sake of clarity, here the circus acts are to be introduced in the narrow sense.
In the Zhou dynasty, the imperial palace attached great importance to horse breeding and there were professional horse breeders and horse breakers. The former were also called grooms responsible for the breeding and tending of the horses while the latter were called the “Quma”responsible for teaching the horse to tread, pause, move, advance, retreat, trot and gallop, which shed light on the great importance imperial palace attached to horse breeding. And at that time emerged experts like Bole and Jiufang Gao who had keenly perceptive eyes for the first-class horses. Even today Bole is widely used to refer to such a man keenly perceptive in sorting out the real talent.
The horse race was also very popular back then, especially in the Qi State. The story about “Tianji participating in the horse race”was set against such a backdrop. At that time the horse race went with some wager, which resembled today’ shorse race in Hong Kong. The horse race was counted as a kind of entertainment and some wel1-trained horses could adjust their speed to different music. The circusacts once were utilized in the wars. The Chronicle and Commentary of Zuo records that the Chen and the Bao in the Qi state utilized the circus acts to distract the attention of their enemy-those troops under the Qing, and sent the Qing’s war horses scampering in panic by utilizing the circus act.
Besides there were some other animal plays among which the monkey play, the cock fighting and the dog fighting were most prevalent. The phrase of “as dumb as a wooden chicken”dated back to this period. The cock fighting enjoyed lasting popularity. Today the venue for cock fighting remains at the Qingming Shanghe garden in Kaifeng, Henan Province. In some areas the dog fighting enjoys popularity as before. Back to the old days some people were engaged in catching and training the birds. The bronze statue of the eagle trainer dating back to the Warring States Period, excavated at the Quan Village in Luoyang, Henan Province features the portrait of a professional bird trainer in the Warring States Period.
