During China's Spring Festival, the villages around Anshun city in Guizhou province in southwest China are filled with the sounds of gongs, drums, and firecrackers attesting to the happiness of entering a new year and a new spring. The villagers use this festival to enjoy and relax. A crowd surges through the village roads, paths, and earth dikes dividing the rice paddies, toward the village gate where the grain is dried after harvesting. Various colorful flags flutter in the stiff wind. The people crowd around in a big circle at whose center flies a pennant imprinted with the large character, Yang. Those familiar with dixi (literally, theatre played on the level ground) know this signals that the day's performance is Yang Jia Jiang (Tales of the Military Officers of the Yang Family). The performers, all male, are the fathers, brothers, lovers, or husbands of those gathering to watch. The audience-standing or sitting-chats, giggles, and warmly criticizes the actors. The open circle has a diameter of about I2 feet, which serves as the stage-battlefield so central to dixi. Accompanied by a gong and drum, the performers-in battle dress with about four or five pennants attached to their backs and or two pheasant tails on their heads, their faces covered with a black gauze kerchief, and wearing lianzi (masks) on their foreheads-manipulate spears and sticks. Today's story is about the loyal Yang father and sons who fought for their country during the Song dynasty (960-1279 C.E.). There is no stage set, not even the one table and two chairs sees in many Chinese traditional theatres. Two cloth screens at two sides of a circle and a chair in front of each screen symbolize a mountain, a camp, or a court. The king or the commander sits on the chair to show his power and prestige while the generals stand on each side, forming two semicircles. Behind and around the actors are the spectators. The circle made by the audience creates the performance space. The effect could never be reproduced on a built stage outdoors or indoors. There is real audience involvement. The villagers are either performing or watching.