"Nuo", a sacrificial ritual that is staged during the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday to expel evil spirits and pray for mild climates and good harvests, has been popular for over 1,000 years in Dayuan, a mountain-locked village in east China's Fujian province.

Red jackets, black aprons, ghostlike masks and artificial tusks. These items came together in spectacular fashion over Spring Festival, in dances watched by large crowds and organized to see in the Year of the Dragon.

"Nuo", a sacrificial ritual that is staged during the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday to expel evil spirits and pray for mild climates and good harvests, has been popular for over 1,000 years in Dayuan, a mountain-locked village in east China's Fujian province.

As legend has it, villagers have been staging the Nuo dances since the Southern Tang dynasty (937-975) to commemorate Zhao Yuande, a warden who secretly released a Dayuan-born prisoner from the imperial jail. The prisoner, Yan Xu, had been removed from the prime minister's post and put behind bars for offending other court officials.

Yan later rewarded Zhao with a happy retired life in Dayuan village, the legend says.

Few people bothered to check if the story was true, but most of the villagers carry the same family name, Yan, and are expert Nuo dancers.

Formal Nuo dances are staged at least three times a year, to mark the Chinese Lunar New Year, spring plowing and harvest in fall.

The ancient, mysterious dance has even brought fame to the out-of-the-way village.

In December 2010, Dayuan was named one of China's "most unique villages in terms of historic and cultural values". The honor was awarded jointly by the Ministry of Housing and the Urban-Rural Development and State Administration of Cultural Heritage.

"We won the honor largely because of the Nuo dancing," said village chief Yan Jianhua.

Yan brought together more than 20 skilled dancers, aged from 20 to 50, for the Lunar New Year performances.

The two dancers leading the team wore masks of Maitreya Buddha, and beat wooden fish, a Buddhist percussion instrument.

Some members of the team acted as the four heavenly kings and different gods - including gods in charge of wind, rain, thunder, lightning, water and fire - and they beat drums as they danced along.

The rest of the team were young men and women who beat gongs and drums and danced ceaselessly to the rhythm to please the gods.

"Each role has dozens of actions based on Chinese Kungfu, and the dancers often spend weeks practising", said Yan. "At the end of the 30-minute show, everyone is sweating."

Folk art specialists say the Nuo dance - its roles, props and actions - has a high artistic value.

"It's very hard indeed to preserve this original dancing form so well in such a remote village," said Gao Qiguang, head of the literary and art federation in Taining county, where Dayuan village is located.

Gao said the Nuo dance is popular also in the neighboring Jiangxi province, but the Nuo culture in Dayuan combines Buddhism and Taoism, a rare phenomenon in the Nuo-prevalent regions of Fujian, Jiangxi and Chongqing municipality.

Taining county's press official, Meng Minle, said he sees a rosy outlook for the Nuo culture in Dayuan village.

"Most intangible heritage items are preserved by the elderly people only," said Meng. "But here in Dayuan, even children dance the ancient dance so well."

Editor: Liu Xiongfei