A dancing performance on the story of the goddess Mazu, which will be showed at the cross strait tourist exposition, makes the dress rehearsal recently in Nanjing.

Wang Daohan, president of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) writes the drama name for the performance.

According to Hong Kong-based Ta Kung Pao, people responsible for the performance revealed that the stage for the dance was carefully prepared with top-class light design.

The appearance of the actors and actresses are beautiful and the actress performing the role of Mazu has high achievement in dancing.

Design of the costume manifests the traditional features of the dress in Meizhou and adopts some of the features of dress worn by Fujian women living along the coastal areas and that worn by Hui'an woman. The whole dancing performance is said to be very beautiful and have high artistic value.

The story of the dance was taken after historical materials and folk legends. According to historical records, Mazu was a fisherwoman born in 960 of the Song Dynasty in Meizhou county, Fujian province.

She had lived for only 28 years in her life, but was a kind, diligent woman who did a lot of good deeds to help the poor and the weak, thus gaining the respect from the common people at that time and today.

At present, there are about 200 million believers of Mazu and 3,000 temples built to commemorate her.

In recent years, about one million people made a courtesy call every year to the Mazu temple set up in Meizhou county.

There are lot of Mazu believers in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan and Taiwan is the place with the most number, where the believers accounts for two-thirds of the total population in the island.

The Mazu culture has also become one of the ten tourist brands in Fujian Province.

The Nanjing Jinling Art Troupe planned to perform the story of Mazu on stage back in 1998. With careful preparations, the dance was awarded with the Lotus Award, the top award in China's dancing circle and won six individual awards in aspects of scripting and directing, performing, music, costume and light design.

After performing in Jiangsu and Fujian provinces, the dance was praised by the audience, especially those from Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and those living abroad.

(Chinanews.cn September 2, 2005)