Post-95s girl becomes online hit with Kung Fu bamboo performance

Photo shows Yang Liu dancing on a 9-meter-long bamboo pole. (Photo/chinanews.com)

Video footage of Yang Liu, a 24-year-old woman from southwest China's Guizhou Province, practicing bamboo drifting -- an artistic form of intangible cultural heritage that resembles Kung Fu -- has recently become a smash hit on the Internet.

Yang explained that in the old days, bamboo canoe drifting, a traditional folk sport that originated in the Chishui River Basin of northern Guizhou, was a means of transportation for the local people, but today has evolved into a competitive sport and a kind of performing art.

Yang started to learn the technique from her grandmother at the age of seven. As she suffered frail health as a child, her grandmother wanted her to get into better shape through this sport. Yang threw herself into practicing bamboo drifting all year round, even in the winter cold and summer heat.

"It was common for me to fall into the water when I started practicing," recalled Yang, adding that it was only three years later that she gradually grasped the most fundamental skills of bamboo drifting.

In order to gain a command of more bamboo drifting skills, Yang had to practice countless difficult movements on a bamboo pole that was 9 meters in length and 15 centimeters in diameter, and endure all the physical pain that came with it.

Through years of tough training, Yang now considers the bamboo pole as her best "companion".

At one point, inspired by her grandmother, Yang began to incorporate elements of dance into her bamboo drifting. "My grandmother came up with an idea. She said that I had been practicing bamboo drifting since I was a child, so why not try to combine dance with the skill? It might be something different,” the young women explained.

Yang's hard work gradually paid off when she was able to perfectly align dancing with the traditional sole bamboo drifting skills. "I hope that more people can know about bamboo drifting and enjoy this form of art,” said Yang, an inheritor of this form of intangible cultural heritage.