Chinese acrobatics

Chinese acrobatics are a favorite art of the Chinese people, with a distinct style evolving from everyday life and work. Despite the advent of dazzling film shows and song-and-dance performances, acrobatics now still shines as one of the brightest stars in Chinese culture. With about 2,500 years of history, Chinese acrobatics have won he nation the title of "Kingdom of Acrobatics." Historical records and ancient relics, including carvings on tombs, stone and brick carvings, murals in temples and grottoes, and decorative patterns on utensils, show that Chinese acrobatics originated in the period of the Warring States (475-221 BC).During the Qin and Han Dynasties (221 BC-AD 220), artists developed a wide repertoire and acrobatics was thus called "the show of a hundred tricks." By the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24), acrobatics had become high art.
Zhang Heng, a great man of letters in the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 AD), wrote about a number of exciting acrobatic acts and magic shows, including "Balancing on a high pole,
"Jumping through hoops," "Hand feats," "Rope walking," "Turning of a fish into a dragon," "Swallowing knives and spitting fire" and "Drawing a line off the ground and it becomes a river. All these illustrate the triumph of ancient Chinese acrobatics. From then on, a variety of acrobatic performances such as traditional conjuring, vocal imitation, taming animals and horsemanship have been described in books and historical relics.