Amateurs dance Manchurian Yangko during a performance. Provided to China Daily

Zhan Lige is a devoted unprofessional. He simply loves his local traditional square dance.

His love for the Manchurian Yangko dates back more than three decades, when he was 4 years old and still lived in a village near Fushun, Liaoning province.

Dancing through time

"Our Manchurian Yangko is a popular square dance in many places. Whenever there is festivity or a fair, we go all out and dance," the 38-year-old traffic management worker says. "And when there is dancing, you'll know the spirits are high."

He calls it a dance of emotions, or more precisely, a dance for ebullience.

"Dance to us is like drinking wine. You dance and shed all your worries. It's pure enjoyment."

"We dance when we're drunk, too," he says. "So our square dance may be a little disorderly, but we're cheerful from the bottom of our hearts."

Compared to the authentic Manchurian Yangko, the square dance has been stripped of most traditional roles and rituals. In the original, there would be two dancers in yellow hoodies and red skirts. They salute each other before letting the group gather in formation, like a bagua (eight diagram tactics). Dancers then mimic taking in the battlefield and begin dancing in pairs, competing against each other, until a horsetail whip signals the end of the dance, explains Zhan.