The characters in the rice-planting songs include: the Tang Monk, the Monkey King, Pigsy, and the Sand Monk in Journey to the West, the White Snake, the White Lady, and Xu Xian, as well as Bao Zheng, Chen Shimei, and Qin Xianglian, accompanied by gongs, drums, cymbals, and oboes that play tunes.
The Yangge in different parts of the world now generally takes the form of a Yangge dance team, with the number of dancers being as few as a dozen or as many as a hundred, and there are various forms of performances, such as group dances, as well as duo dances and trio dances, etc. The performers, according to the needs of their roles, hold props like handkerchiefs, umbrellas, rods, drums, and whips of money, and dance to their hearts' content to the accompaniment of the gongs, drums, oboes, and other blowing and playing musical instruments.
Development of Yangge
The dance is a form of dance that has been widely spread in China and has distinctive national characteristics. It is mainly performed in squares on the 15th day of the first month of the lunar calendar, the Lantern Festival. This dance is closely related to agricultural labor.
By the labor step, as the basis of the dance step, in the art of processing, and make the masses of the team neatly, the formation of a complete rice-planting dance, and then gradually become congratulatory, entertaining New Year's Eve social fire team dance, the performance of the contents of the Han folk tales, myths and legends.
Yangge Dance has been prevalent in the Qing Dynasty, Qing Dynasty scholar Wu Xiqi in his book "New Year's Day Miscellaneous Chant Copy" that the popular Han Chinese folk dance of the Song Dynasty, "Village Field Music" is the predecessor of the Yangge Dance.