[Video/Aijinan APP]

The girl dancing the yangko in the video is Alina Cichocki from Kenya. She is an international student studying at Shandong Normal University and has been in China for two years. She loves music and Chinese martial arts and has a special love for local guzi yangko and drum yangko. 

In her opinion, drum yangko perfectly integrates two completely different artistic forms of music and martial arts. After she gets caught up with her busy coursework, she often dances the traditional Chinese yangko with her friends.

The drum yangko in Shanghe county is a local traditional folk dance that has a history of nearly 2,000 years. The dance is performed to celebrate major festivals such as the Chinese Lunar New Year. Performers incorporate martial arts moves into the dance to the beats of fierce drum music.

One of the characteristics of the yangko is that performers run in a certain dance formation instead of twist. A formation is made up of dozens or hundreds of people. The dance expresses the bold and unconstrained characteristics of Shandong people.

The Shanghe drum yangko was included in the first batch of the national intangible cultural heritage items list in 2006.