Dancing the Spirits: Ground Opera, Ritual Performance, and the Living Heritage of Guizhou’s Tunpu People

Dancing the Spirits explores the Ground Opera of Guizhou’s Tunpu people as performance, ritual, community memory, and living heritage. Formed from Ming-era military settlements more than six centuries ago, Tunpu communities have preserved a distinctive masked theater tradition in which hand-carved lianzi masks, martial narratives, village ritual, and local identity converge.

Following Ground Opera from village performances to the 1986 Festival d’Automne in Paris and contemporary preservation efforts, Li Xiao introduces troupe leaders, performers, researchers, and mask carvers while examining transmission, tourism, commercialization, and generational change.

This 176-page hardcover includes 20 illustrations and a 24-page color section and is suited to collections in cultural anthropology, performance studies, folklore, intangible cultural heritage, Chinese history, and Asian studies.