China. In the Event Business for 3,000 Years
China’s taking center stage this summer — but the Beijing Olympics are only the latest in three millennia of spectacular events
by Doug Matthews | Published in August 2008 Event Currents | event design | production
This month, over half the world’s population will witness some of the greatest spectacles ever produced for a public audience. I’m talking, of course, about the ceremonies and events surrounding the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China.
Home to one of the world’s oldest civilizations, China has a recorded history that dates back over 3,000 years, and that means three millennia of feasts, festivals and entertainment — many equal in creativity and magnitude to today’s special events.
Indeed, the Chinese are no strangers to the event business, and you can bet that what they produce for the Olympics will be talked about for a long time to come. But first, get some fuel for your creative engines by learning about the spectacular event history that got them where they are today.
The F&B: ‘Tail-Burners’ to Tortoises
The idea that a normal event meal lasts a few hours and then everyone goes away fat, dumb and happy is typical of the way we organize dinners today. Not so in the Tang Dynasty (618 to 907 B.C.E.), at the zenith of ancient Chinese culture. The emperors of the time spared no expense for state events, including meals — some of which lasted up to five days.
One emperor, Zhongzong, gave a feast dubbed a “tail-burner” that consisted of 58 courses and offered such delicacies as sausages of beef intestines filled with mutton fat and marrow, strands of sheep hide a foot in length, octagonal cold food cakes formed in wooden molds, sheep and deer tongues, shredded goose, snow baby (water frogs with beans), rabbit, pigeon roasted alive, and a platter of lamb, pork, mutton, bear and deer, according to Charles Benn, who wrote “Daily Life in Traditional China: The Tang Dynasty.”
Like today’s event pros, emperors and nobility vied to be the most creative, hiring ingenious craftsmen to build mechanical props and décor for the banquets. Benn describes one such affair, which featured a 3-foot-tall ale mountain atop a large model tortoise with a hidden, interior reservoir. An ale pool encircled the base of the mountain, and a ring of hills surrounded the pool. Lotuses with blossoms and leaves of wrought iron rose from the pool. Midway up, three sides of the mountain were dragons, the front halves of whose bodies protruded from the slope. The beasts opened their mouths and spit brew into goblets seated on the lotus leaves beneath.
The Entertainment: The Original Cirque du Soleil
Most banquets of the nobility throughout China’s history incorporated all forms of entertainment, which was as diverse and inventive as the food presentation. Music, for example, was revered as a means to reproduce cosmic order and harmony amongst people, according to Maurizio Scarpari, author of “Daily Life in Traditional China: The Tang Dynasty.” Emperors had their own palace orchestras, usually exquisitely dressed and all female. Dancing accompanied by music was at the core of the lengthy theatrical presentations at feasts, as were illusionists, acrobats, wrestlers and animal acts.
At one birthday celebration for the Emperor Xuanzong in the 8th century B.C.E., writes Benn, the show’s climax was a troop of 100 dancing horses, all adorned with figured embroidery, pearl and jade ornaments attached to their manes and forelocks, and gold and silver halters. These coursers performed to a song called “Music of the Upended Goblet”, which had 10 parts and was played by a live orchestra. (No doubt a novel mechanical ale dispenser was also present somewhere!) In the course of their act, they knelt, reared on their hind legs, clutched goblets in their mouths, and even got a little tipsy. In an astounding denouement, the steeds ascended a three-tiered platform and whirled around on top of it.
Large public festivals and carnivals were common in ancient China, right from the days of the first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who in 222 B.C.E. decreed that everyone in the empire should engage in great drinking revelries to celebrate his conquest and unification of China.
As with modern carnivals in New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro, a parade of floats drawn by horses or cows was one of the highlights. Some of these were entertainment wagons on which acrobats performed flying stunts at the top of poles fastened to the wagons. And you thought Cirque du Soleil was the first to use acrobats on poles!
However, they paled in comparison to Tang floats, called mountain carts or drought boats. The former were wagons that had superstructures hung with colored silks formed to resemble mountains, some up to four or five stories high.
Also draped with colored cloth, drought boats were ships made of bamboo and wood. Rather than floating on water, however, men inside the boat floats carried them along the avenues; hence their name. Musicians dressed in rich fabrics and summoned from counties as far as 100 miles away rode on the tops of the boats, according to Benn.
The Décor: Lanterns and More
Some festivals such as the Lantern Festival, which is thought to have originated around the 1st century B.C.E., survive today. Even so, the grandeur of the past is still hard to match.
In 713 B.C.E., Emperor Ruizong had a lantern wheel 200 feet tall erected outside a gate of Chang’an (now called Xian, the city is one of the great ancient capitals of China and the starting point of the Silk Road to the West). It was clothed in brocades and silk gauze, and adorned with gold and jade. When he had its 50,000 oil cups lit, the radiance burst forth like the blooms on a flowering tree. More than a thousand female performers wearing gauze trails, embroidered brocades with lustrous pearls, kingfisher hairpins, and fragrant makeup danced and sang under the lantern wheel for three days and nights, according to Benn.
Finally, precision and pageantry was the order of the day for most spectacles. Take, for example, the entourages that regularly accompanied emperors whenever they ventured from the inner palace of the Forbidden City, in Beijing. During the Song dynasty (1067 to 1085 B.C.E.), Emperor Shenzong’s honor guard reportedly numbered 22,000 for state occasions. These included soldiers in full regalia carrying pennants, banners, and weapons, others with fans, musicians of all types, elephant-drawn chariots, wagons, and palanquins carrying the emperor and high-ranking officials, as described by Robert L. Thorp in “Son of Heaven: Imperial Arts of China.”
China can never be accused of producing events on a small scale, whether thousands of years ago or for the 2008 Olympics. Today’s event planners should be anticipating the Summer Games with baited breath and cameras at the ready so you won’t miss a minute of the incredibly imaginative concepts that will no doubt be on display for the world.