Xinqian Tea Picking Dance is a folk dance popular in Xinqian Street, Huangyan District, Taizhou City. It originated from the tea picking songs and tea picking operas of the rural folks. It has a strong sense of life and local flavor and has a history of more than 300 years. The dance was originally based on the names of 12 flowers, and the lyrics were compiled with 12 months. The first 6 months were positive picking (i.e. forward picking), and the last 6 months were reverse picking (i.e. reverse picking). The tune is simple and healthy, gentle and pleasant, with a strong sense of rhythm, easy-to-understand lyrics, simple and beautiful movements, and is very popular among the masses. According to various investigations by the people, Xinqian Tea Picking Dance also originated from the Tea Picking Songs popular in Huangyan Tea Town in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, and has also experienced a 300-year evolution from tea picking songs, tea picking operas to tea picking dances. However, there is no historical evidence to support this. What is documented is that in the late Qing Dynasty, Wang Tianming (1866-1959) and Li Xiaogen (deceased) of Qili Village danced the tea picking dance, and Xu Dachu (deceased) and other villagers had seen the tea picking dance. The mother of Mr. Xu Xiangchun (now 80 years old) has long kept the handwritten copy of the tea-picking dance handed down from the previous generation, which records the lyrics, gongche notation, and formation of the tea-picking dance, and handed it over to the village in 1956. In the 1980s, when the Cultural Center was collecting and sorting out folk art, it collected the lyrics of a song called "Tea-picking Song" that was circulated in the tea villages of Xinqian and Toudao during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The song was sung from the first month of the lunar calendar to the twelfth month of the lunar calendar. The lyrics of "Liu Quanjin melons to the underworld, borrowing corpses to return the soul to Li Cuilian" clearly have traces of the Ming and Qing society. Mr. Xu Xiangcai (77 years old) from Qili Village, Xinqian can still recite the entire song "Tea-picking Song". And he sings it with the original tune of the tea-picking dance. According to Fang Caigen, an 85-year-old Xinqian man who is still alive, during the Republic of China, local farmers in Xinqian often performed "Tea-picking Dance" in the square or on the stage (sometimes using square tables to make a stage) to celebrate the harvest and entertain themselves during festivals or temple fairs. There are also performances at people's doorsteps during the Spring Festival to get tips and rice cakes and snacks and collect some small money. The content of the tea-picking dance expresses the joyful scene of a group of tea-picking girls going up the mountain to pick tea (work). The earliest version describes that when the village girl was picking tea, a girl's lover (also known as a shepherd boy) picked flowers, and the girls stopped and snatched them, chased each other, and walked out of many beautiful formations. This form of performance can also be called "picking tea to grab flowers" and "picking tea to catch butterflies". At that time, there were 12 female actors and 1 male shepherd boy. The performance rhythm was relatively "loose", relatively free and romantic, and also had a strong dramatic flavor. The lyrics of the lyrics of the tea-picking dance are also the accumulation of materials from farmers in actual labor. For example, "Picking tea in the first month is the new year, beating gongs and drums, lions in the front village snatch hydrangeas, and dragons in the back village turn over." It shows that the lives of farmers are becoming increasingly prosperous and joyful after liberation. Another example is "Picking tea in June is coarse, and coarse leaves are fine. It takes time to make fine tea. Tea picking is not afraid of the sun, and baking is not afraid of the fire of rice husks." The new tea-picking dance shows the hard work of tea farmers when picking and making tea. The lyrics are simple and popular, and farmers can understand them at once. Local girls can sing and perform some movements. The basic steps of the Xinqian tea-picking dance absorb the rhythm of the steps of opera Huadan (round field), and have their own unique folk formations (also called "walking formations" or walking formations). There are snake-shaped, coiled dragon-shaped, four-flower-shaped, eight-shaped, cross-shaped, etc. The performers sing a paragraph and change a formation. The formation changes smoothly and the pictures are colorful, vividly showing the scenes and happy moods of tea-picking girls when picking tea in different environments such as hills and slopes. The hand movements are appropriately deformed on the basis of simulating the shape of picking tea leaves, and the wrists and elbows are overlapped up and down and crossed left and right. The movements are simple and graceful, showing that the dance style is fresh and delicate, the image is beautiful, and it is full of strong local flavor and life interest. After liberation, the lyrics, tunes and forms of the tea-picking dance were provided by old artists such as Wang Tianming, Wang Minglun and Wang Zhifang in Qili Village. After being sorted and processed into dances by old artists such as Song Faming and Li Minshan in the village, they became popular. In 1956, Huangyan Cultural Center sent teacher Jiang Yue'e to sort and process it again and participated in the first folk music and dance performance in Huangyan County, which shocked the audience and won the first prize for performance. In 1957, "Tea-picking Dance" won the first prize for performance when participating in the Zhejiang Provincial Folk Dance Performance and stayed in Hangzhou for public performance. During the "Cultural Revolution", the tea-picking dance was trampled on and stopped for a long time. During the National Day performance in 1984, Xinqian Township reorganized Qili Village to choreograph and made necessary artistic treatments to the dance style, costumes and props. It participated in the Huangyan County Art Performance and won the second prize. In October 1999, the tea-picking dance participated in the Huangyan District's large-scale square cultural and sports performance to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the National Day. In October of the same year, it participated in the Taizhou City's first art festival folk art series performance and won the silver medal. In 2002 and 2005, it participated in the Huangyan Citrus Festival and Farmers' Art Festival street performance activities. In 2007, the Xinqian Tea-picking Dance was included in the Huangyan District's first batch of intangible cultural heritage protection list by the district government. In June 2008, it was included in the second batch of intangible cultural heritage protection list of the municipal government. In 2009, it was included in the Zhejiang Province Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection List.