Dongbeizhuang, a small town under the administration of Puyang City, is the “Land of Acrobatics”. Dongbeizhuang and Wuqiao in Hebei Province are called the two hometowns of Chinese acrobatics.
Almost everyone in Dongbeizhuang likes acrobatics. Man or woman, old or young, everybody can show some skills. Youngsters would succeed their parents' career and the whole family would come into this trade, so the custom of performing acrobatics has lasted. Now nearly 30 famous acrobats has retired and come back to their hometown, where they could spread their skills in schools, thus the acrobatics skill of Dongbeizhuang has become more and more excellent, and more and more people become fond of this art.
It has been more than 300 years since the people there began to practice acrobatics, and in the mid-Qing dynasty, this custom was in full bloom. At the end of Qing dynasty, acrobats in the town accounted for 80% of the total people there. Among the 13 professional acrobatics troupes, the most famous one is the Qiao Family Troupe, which consists of over 50 people and is headed by Qiao Jiaqing, having given performances in Russia, Japan, Korea, India, Philippines and so on.
As one of the three most famous acrobatics schools in China, Puyang Acrobatics School trains skillful talents for 80% of acrobatics performing organizations throughout the country. In 1997, Dongbeizhuang set up the Puyang Local Acrobatics Development Center to send acrobats to foreign lands. Now, this center has three fixed performance sites, namely, Puyang, Shenzhen Happy Valley and Disneyland in America. Currently about 500 people of Dongbeizhuang give acrobatic performances all the year round away from home in 27 provinces or cities in China, and 37 people act as the head of the acrobatics troupes at home and abroad. Acrobats from Dongbeizhuang could be found in the acrobatics organizations of around 41 countries such as Korea, Japan and Germany. In 1999, the Disneyland of America invested more than US$ 0.4 million to construct an acrobatics show hall with an area of 5,000 square meters in the Green Park of Puyang, and there are all kinds of performances every day. In 2000, the Puyang municipality approved Dongbeizhuang as the key traveling spot and invested a large sum of fund to construct the acrobatics hall and the outdoor performance site. It has become one of the highlights of He'nan tourism.
