The Yingge Girl

Chen Qiuying, a young woman from Chaoshan, trained in Yingge dance from childhood, but traditional taboos forced her to bury her dream. Her older sister, who had polio, encouraged her to enter a competition, saying she could use the prize money to pay for her treatment. From then on, the Yingge dance batons she had used for ten years began to shine.

She strived to make every movement perfect and precise, but her gender was challenged during the ancestral hall auditions. The simple “Phoenix Dance Formation” she created by blending styles was mocked as “neither one thing nor the other.” Only after her sister, driven to despair by oppression, jumped into the sea and killed herself did Chen Qiuying dance alone in the torrential rain and understand the true meaning of Yingge’s warrior spirit.

“The true warrior spirit is when someone trapped in an old shell lifts up another heart and sends it crashing toward freedom.”