The tone of the dance used to be sorrowful, but was changed to show happiness in the students' performance. [Photo by Guo Ruliang/China Daily]

An old folk art

Popular in the county, the Fengyang flower-drum dance has a history of more than 600 years. It was often considered as a performance form for the middle-aged and elderly people, before the young college students started to inject fresh vitality into the old folk art.

Fengyang county is the birthplace of China's rural reforms. In December 1978, after the collectivized farming policy had been in force nationwide for about 20 years, 18 farmers in the county's Xiaogang village secretly signed an agreement to subdivide their common farmland into family plots in the hope of increasing crop yields.

"Xiaogang village is very famous, so is the Fengyang flower-drum dance, but I didn't have more knowledge than merely the name before I came here in 2015," said Wu Yan, a junior from Hubei province who has been studying at ASTU.

A member of the university's student flower-drum dance art troupe, Wu was echoed by most of the other troupe members, who come from other parts of China.