Foshan Qiushe Festival

“Qiu Se” (Autumn Scene), means the scene of harvest. “Foshan Qiu Se” is the name for the ancient artistic activities in Foshan, a collective of Foshan traditional arts.

As early as in the Ming Dyasnty, in order to celebrate harvest, at the end of harvest in Autumn, the Foshan residents would use the leftover materials of handcraft industy such as paper, remnant cloth, silk, glue, wax, ceramic mud, bamboo and agricultural byproducts such as pods, soybeans, fish scale, fruits, and radish etc to make imitation cooper and iron awares, imitation ceramic curios, imitation flowers, birds, and fishes and fruits etc with the techniques of binding, pasting, paper folding, carving, paper-cut, sculpting and pouring, which have contributed to the unique styles of “Foshan Qiu Se” that mix the false with the genuine.

The Qiu Se also includes color lantern binding, flower vehicle, makeup shapes and various performances and folk musics etc.

In the autumn evenings each year, the residents would take the handcrafts and various programs to particitpate in the shows, which gradually formed the Foshan Qiu Se Contest full of local sytels. The Foshan residents call it “Chu Qiu Se”. At the date of contest, the whole town of Foshan would turn out for the activity, which was an unprecedented event.

The Qiu Se is also called “Qiu Xiao” and “Qiu Jing”, which is the particular large folk cultural entertainment activity in Foshan. In the past the Qiu Se was always held in the night of Autumn of harvest, which was divided into seven categorie, including Lantern Scene, Vehicel Scene, Horse Scene, Ground Scene, Water Scene, Floating Scene and View Scene. In Yong Le period of Ming Dynasty, various fine handcraft articles were developed, which were shown in the form of parade.

Meanwhile, the performances of Dragon Dance, Lion Dance, Shifan and Gong-Drum cabinet were used for adding to the fun. Year after year, the techniques became more and more superb, and the size became bigger and bigger.