Chapter 35 Section 7 pedaling skills

Kicking skills started in Baixi in the early Han Dynasty, and it was not until the Song Dynasty that it became an independent acrobatic event. It was further developed and perfected during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and became popular in the society.In the tenth episode of "The Amorous History of Emperor Sui Yang" edited and performed by Qidong Yeren in the Ming Dynasty, "Chen Baixi in Tokyo, Three Mountains from Beihai", described the grand occasion of performing Baixi.Here is an old illustration depicting an artist performing kicking skills: a male artist is lying on his back on a short long table, stretching his feet and pedaling a rotating wooden drum; .In "Mingzhai Xiaozhi", Zhulian in the Qing Dynasty described a female artist performing kicking skills: she lay on her back on the ground, stretched her feet, "frozen the urn, and spun like a ball".After a while, she "throws the urn with her left foot, about two feet high", catches it with her right foot when it falls, then throws the urn with her right foot, and catches it with her left foot.She can also place an urn on each of her feet, "returning back and forth, throwing like a shuttle, rolling like a ball, flying like a bird, leaning on and sideways, never leaving her feet", her skills are very exquisite.Peng Shiwang of the Qing Dynasty recorded the scene of the kicking skills of the artists in "Jiu Niu Dam Watching the Corner Arriving at the Opera": first, a female artist performed the kicking skills with both feet "inheriting the eight-year-old", and then performed the pedaling skills with both feet. The table kicking skill of "rotating four corners in one case" is performed, and then the drum kicking skill of "carrying a mallet, turning it with two legs or throwing it vertically" is performed.Afterwards, a male artist performed on stage. He "supported a ladder vertically" with his feet, and there were "five steps".In Xu Ke's short story "Li Sai'er Plays Nine Rings" compiled in "Skills and Bravery" in "Qing Barnyard Banknotes", it is described that the female artist Li Sai'er can not only throw nine rings acrobatics, but also be good at kicking urns.She can practice the small flower porcelain vat to "surround her whole body", and she can also lie high on the five-story table, "support a large urn with two small feet, weigh dozens of catties, and dance for a long time".Going to the urn, it was easy to make a small wooden ladder, "straighten the soles of the feet", so that the boy named Xiaosan'er "climbed [nie Nie] to climb the cloud shoes, stood upright on the ladder, turned through the empty space of the ladder, suddenly screamed, and fell from the sky. "Falling down", there are two big men next to them, calmly "holding small three and two palms with two hands, making a vertical dragonfly shape".At the end of Ming Dynasty and the beginning of Qing Dynasty, there was a novel "梼杌xian Commentary". The second chapter of this book described a female artist's pedaling skills. She lay on her back on the table and put her feet up. Put a vermilion pole upright and a short pole vertically in the woman's feet." A child climbed up the pole and danced on the short horizontal pole. Still maintaining balance, after a while "the child jumped off, and the woman also jumped off the table", in which the female artist and the children's skills are very exquisite.Li Shengzhen, a poet of the Qing Dynasty, wrote a poem "Deng Lai" in "Bai Xi Zhu Zhi Ci":