Heshan, Hok San and Sar Ping

This chapter is the deep background to Sar Ping drumming. It follows one thread from a county town in Guangdong to a gym in Madison, Wisconsin: the Heshan lion (Hok San), the man credited with creating it, the Singapore lineage that calls itself Sar Ping, and the eighteen drum routes at the heart of that lineage. The second half rebuilds the 18 routes from every source found for this guide, sets out the spellings and glosses that need care, and explains the story behind the order. Where sources disagree, both versions are given and the disagreement is marked.

Heshan and Shaping: the place behind the names

Heshan (鶴山, Cant. hok6 saan1, "Hok San"; Mand. Hèshān) means "Crane Mountain". The county took its name from a hill north of the county town that was said to look like a crane.¹ It was carved out of parts of two older counties, Xinhui (新會, san1 wui6, Xīnhuì) and Kaiping (開平, hoi1 ping4, Kāipíng), in the Yongzheng reign of the Qing dynasty. Chinese Wikipedia gives the approval date as the 7th month of the 9th Yongzheng year, which is 30 August 1731; English Wikipedia gives 1732.¹² The two dates probably mark approval and formal establishment.

Heshan came under Jiangmen (江門, gong1 mun4, Jiāngmén) on 1 June 1983 and became a county-level city in November 1993. It covers about 1,083 square kilometres, with about 538,400 residents in 2021. Its seat is Shaping (沙坪, Cant. saa1 ping4, "Sar Ping"; Mand. Shāpíng, "sandy flat"), now a subdistrict (沙坪街道).¹² That is the Sar Ping in the name of the drumming system. Nelson Ferreira of the Zhong Yi Kung Fu Association told a library audience that "Sar Ping is actually the name of a village in China", the ancestral home of the style his group had visited.³ Strictly it is the county seat rather than a village, and it is also the home district of the style's founder (see below).

Heshan is part of the region overseas Cantonese call Ng Yup or Sze Yup. The older term, Siyi (四邑, Cant. sei3 jap1, "Sze Yup", "Four Counties"), covered Taishan, Kaiping, Enping and Xinhui. Heshan is the fifth member of Wuyi (五邑, Cant. ng5 jap1, "Ng Yup", Mand. Wǔyì, "Five Counties"), which became the official collective name after Jiangmen was set up as a prefecture-level city in 1983. Overseas communities still mostly say Sze Yup, because Heshan did not exist as a county when the four-county term was coined: its land then belonged to Xinhui and Kaiping.⁴ David Lei, the San Francisco Chinatown historian, put it this way in a lecture: Hok San is "one of the five districts... we used to call it Say Yup, four district, but now they add Hok San".⁵

Heshan is an emigrant hometown (僑鄉, kiu4 hoeng1, qiáoxiāng). It sent fewer people abroad than Taishan, but enough to carry its lion across the world.

Lion dance is still everyday life there. A 2024 feature from the Heshan Cultural Centre and Heshan ICH Protection Centre says nearly every village committee has more than one lion team, more than 6,000 people practise lion art, and the city holds more than ten lion events a year.⁶ A Heshan-school lion art heritage hall (鶴派獅藝傳承館沙坪館) has opened in Shaping, shown in a 2020 video with a giant lion on display.⁷ Shaping's Yuqiao (玉橋) folk-arts festival, held on the 22nd day of the 4th lunar month in honour of the Han-dynasty figure Chen Ping (陳平), is described in one video as 700 years old and was listed as Jiangmen ICH in 2009; lion troupes attend.⁸

Feng Gengchang and the founding story

Chinese government and heritage sources credit one man with creating the Heshan lion: Feng Gengchang (馮庚長, Cant. fung4 gang1 coeng4, "Fung Gang Cheung"; Mand. Féng Gēngcháng; English Wikipedia writes "Feng Gengzhang"; Vietnamese Phùng Canh Trường). He was born in 1852 in Dalang village (大朗村), Yuetang (越塘), Shaping.⁹⁶ Singapore's Chinese Cultural Centre gives his dates as 1852-1897; no Chinese source found gives a death year.¹⁰ His courtesy name was Zhanpeng (展鵬, zin2 paang4), and Singapore Hok San Association records identify "Feng Zhanpeng" as the founding ancestor of the Heshan lion (鶴山獅的鼻祖).¹¹

The official story runs like this. Feng trained from childhood with his father, a lay disciple of Shaolin (少林俗家弟子). As an adult he studied martial arts and lion art in Foshan under a fellow townsman, Feng Liaoxing (馮了性), who ran a clinic and martial hall there.⁶ Back home he kept cats in his martial hall, watched them closely, and worked out a new way for the lion to move: "lion form, cat step" (獅型貓步, also written 獅形貓步, Cant. si1 jing4 maau1 bou6, Mand. shī xíng māo bù).⁶ The cat behaviours he is said to have studied include catching mice, playing, catching birds, leaping high, crouching low and rolling.⁹¹² He gave the lion eight emotions and a set of fixed behaviours, and he created a new drum method, the Seven-Star drum (七星鼓法), described as "majestic, pleasing and strongly rhythmic" and "a major innovation in southern lion drumming".⁶¹¹ Heshan sources call him the "Guangdong Lion King" (廣東獅王) or "Heshan Lion King".¹³⁹

"As soon as experts hear the Seven-Star drum, they say: the Heshan lion is here." (行家只要一聽到「七星鼓」響起，就會說「鶴山獅來了」)

Heshan city government website¹⁴

Before Feng's method, according to the 2024 Heshan feature, Heshan drummers used three-star, five-star (also called plum-blossom, 梅花鼓) and mixed drums. The Seven-Star method was built to fit the cat step and the eight emotions.⁶ A Jiangmen Daily report from July 2026 adds that Feng created the Heshan head together with a man named Chen Dou (陳斗, can4 dau2), working from the image of a cat's head, which is why the head is also called the "Chen Dou lion" (陳斗獅).¹⁵

Heshan and Foshan are described in Heshan's own literature as the "two great schools" of southern lion, and a local saying sums up the relationship: 南國獅藝，起源於佛山，發祥於鶴山, "southern lion art originated in Foshan and flourished in Heshan".⁶ For Foshan's side of the story see Chapter 6; for how the two styles sit among the other southern styles see Chapter 4.

What makes a lion "Hok San": principles and movement

Heshan sources reduce the style to three hallmarks: the cat step, the eight emotions (獅藝八情) and the Seven-Star drum.⁹ Around those sit a footwork system, a training formula and a set of rules for how the lion reacts to things. These are the ideas behind every Sar Ping drum route, so they are worth knowing in detail.

The eight emotions

The Heshan list of eight emotions (八情, baat3 cing4, bā qíng) is given the same way by the Heshan government, the China ICH portal and a US kung fu site.⁶⁹¹⁷ Singapore Hok San teaching gives the same eight, with sleep and drunk in the other order, each with its own drum rhythm.¹¹

The seven "musts"

Heshan texts give the lion a fixed reaction to seven things it meets.⁶ Several of the 18 drum routes act these out, which is why they matter to a drummer.

The third column is this guide's reading, not a source's.

Footwork and training formula

Heshan footwork is summed up as "five stances, eighteen steps" (五馬十八步, ng5 maa5 sap6 baat3 bou6); no source found lists which five and which eighteen. The training secret is "four arrivals, five methods, six essentials" (四到五法六要).⁶

Signature Heshan actions named in the same feature are 洪頭蔡尾 (probably "Hung Gar head, Choy Gar tail", not confirmed), 玩七星 (playing the seven stars), 三出三入 (three times out, three times in), 反獅被 (turning the lion's cloak) and the difficult 玩繡球 (playing with the embroidered ball). Traditional pieces include "Big-Head Buddha Leads the Lion" (《大頭佛引獅》) and "Hero Fights the Lion" (《英雄打獅》), both drawing on Cantonese opera.⁶ The style's motto: "still as a clever cat waiting for a mouse to leave its hole; moving as nimbly as a cat pouncing" (靜如靈貓伺鼠出穴，動如靈貓捕鼠敏捷).¹¹

Hok San against Fut San

Heshan writers put the biggest difference in the footwork. Foshan is 硬橋硬馬、聲勢雄壯, "hard bridges, solid stances, imposing"; Heshan is 靈巧活潑、情態可人, "nimble, lively, endearing".⁶ The China ICH portal says the Heshan lion combines "the lion's power with the cat's liveliness".⁹ Outside China the same contrast is repeated in many languages: a Japanese explainer calls Foshan tiger-based and Heshan cat-based, "cute, light, agile";²⁰ a Hanoi TV documentary says the Phật Sơn style is "tiger-leopard form" suited to the ground while the Hạc Sơn style copies the cat and suits dancing up high;²¹ Boston's Gund Kwok describes Hok San as "more like a cute cat", softer but more acrobatic than Fut San.²² In Singapore, Hok San is known for fluid, cat-like movement with the lion standing on its hind legs from a horse-stance base, and students historically had to master drum, cymbals and gong before touching the costume.²³

Three Sar Ping-specific movement details come from practitioners filmed with Master Siow Ho Phiew in Malaysia in 2007. Siow's "Three Triangle" is called the basic movement of Hok San Sar Ping: the head looks around inside a triangular frame, especially while running, "so the lion looks more alive".²⁴ The drummer gives visible signals: "The elbows out is a signal for Tam Bo and the variation is the wrist turn", and such signals are "a massive part of Hok San Sar Ping".²⁵ And a separate Hok San bow class (not labelled Sar Ping) teaches the bow as a whole-body movement: feet together, jump out into a cat stance, bring the head down "as if you actually bow", then "come out and then pop up" Hok San Bow Explained @ 00:44.²⁶

The Hok San head

The Heshan head is flatter than the Foshan head, with a lower forehead, a rounded "fist" horn (拳角, kyun4 gok3) that stays visible, and a protruding mouth that hides the upper teeth. Singapore's Chinese Cultural Centre: "flatter, with a mouth shaped like a duck's beak, and does not show its upper teeth. It looks gentler and more reserved to personify Liu Bei." The Foshan head "has a longer head decorated with more pom-poms and shows its upper teeth."¹⁰ Hence the English nickname "duck-bill lion" (鴨嘴獅, aap3 zeoi2 si1); a Chinese video lists the four southern schools as Nanhai big-head, Heshan duck-mouth, Qingyuan Yingde rooster and Leizhou parrot lions.²⁷ Heshan people themselves prefer "frog-mouth lion" (蛤乸嘴獅, gap3 naa2 zeoi2 si1), because the mouth juts out like a frog's.¹⁵

The 2024 Heshan feature lists a typical Heshan head's parts as 青鼻、企眼、鯉魚額、拳角、蓬花座、蓮蓬眼頂、貓鬚面、蛤乸嘴、爛耳兜風: green nose, upright eyes, carp forehead, fist horn, lotus base, lotus-pod eye tops, cat-whisker face, frog mouth and ragged wind-catching ears, with five bats on the back (五蝠背) and blue-green and yellow as the main colours. Its signature and most popular model is the yellow "Liu Bei lion" (劉備獅): yellow base, tiger stripes, green nose, green face.⁶¹⁵ For the Three Kingdoms colour code shared with Foshan see Chapter 11.

Sources for the table: Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre, 5elementsld's comparison Futsan vs. Hoksan @ 00:14, Hoa Vu Lion Art (Vietnam), and Gund Kwok.^10282922

David Lei, describing San Francisco, calls Hok San "the duck bill lion... very narrow the mouth" and "the kind of lion we use today mainly for competition", lighter and narrower, with fewer pom-poms because a dropped pom-pom costs points Chinese Lion Dance in the American Context @ 21:02.⁵ In Singapore in the 1950s, Hok San elders made the fierce-looking lion more appealing: black eyebrows became white, and the length came down from 12 feet to 6.³⁰ Boston's Gund Kwok says its style is "mostly Fat San style but we often use the Hok San heads because they are cuter".²²

Head-making in Heshan has four processes, 扎、撲、寫、裝 (frame, paste, paint, assemble), and takes at least 10-15 days. Feng Shengqiang (馮勝強), a fifth-generation maker who took over in 2015, works in Songyuan village, Yuetang, Shaping; his father Feng Jianlin learned from Wen Zhaolian (溫兆聯).¹⁵

Heritage status

Heshan lion art is a provincial heritage item, not, on current evidence, a national one in its own name.

Provincial-level transmitters of Heshan lion art include Feng Kunjie (馮昆杰) and Huang Yong'an (黃永安).⁶ Feng Kunjie, 74 in 2010, a fourth-generation disciple of Feng Gengchang through his teacher Feng Zhen (馮禎), spent ten years hand-writing a 200-page, 50,000-character manuscript, "Southern Awakened Lion" (《南國醒獅》), finished in 1988 and unpublished as of 2010.⁹

How the Heshan lion reached Singapore

Sar Ping is Heshan lion as it was kept and codified in Singapore. The Singapore story starts with Heshan labourers. In the early 20th century, Heshan coolies working at Hong Kong Street on the Singapore River, among them disciples of Feng Gengchang, practised lion and martial arts there.¹¹¹⁰ Li Yisheng (李怡生, lei5 ji4 sang1), a Heshan native described by the Singapore Hok San Association as "one of the favourite students of Feng Geng Chang", founded the Yi Yi Tong lion troupe (怡怡堂瑞獅團, ji4 ji4 tong4), Singapore's first southern lion troupe.³³⁶ It became the Hok San Association lion troupe in 1939, when the troupe evolved into the Heshan clan association (鶴山會館, "Hok San Association").¹⁰ The association first rented a Neil Road shophouse and has been at 21 Kreta Ayer Road, a conserved building in Chinatown, since 1983.³⁴

The Heshan lion in Singapore was tied to ancestor rites. At Qingming and Chongyang, Heshan clansmen gathered at Hong Kong Street and then danced at the Kwong Wai Shiu Peck San Theng cemetery (廣惠肇碧山亭) to honour their dead.¹¹ In 1939 Kong Chow Wui Koon formed a second Cantonese troupe; for decades only three troupes were registered (Hok San, Kong Chow and Jing Wu); and in 1951 six troupes paraded. The Singapore Free Press reported a Heshan clan lion-dance fundraiser at the Happy World stadium in 1951, and in 1968 the Hok San troupe made a 45-minute, three-act television lion drama.¹¹ After the war the Heshan lion drew martial artists from Singapore and Malaya, who went on to found their own troupes.¹¹

Heshan emigrants also took the lion to Vietnam. The Tongyi society (同義社) of Chợ Lớn (堤岸), Saigon's Chinatown, founded in the Qing, opened a school on Meishan Street in 1924 and registered in 1943 as the Heshan Natives Association in Vietnam (旅越鶴山同鄉會).¹¹ The Heshan Museum displays antique bronze cymbals given by Xiao Peili (蕭培利), founder of a Heshan sports association in Singapore, a physical trace of the link back home.³⁵

The Singapore masters

The Hok San Association's own "Past Masters" page names the people through whom the Sar Ping drum came down.³³

Liang Zhaofu came from Guangdong as a youth and worked in clock-making. A 1981 Nanyang Siang Pau feature, cited by a Ngee Ann Polytechnic exhibition, describes his method as "a repertoire of 18 techniques played consecutively", in which tempo and dynamics map to emotion: loud for exuberance, fast for anger, soft and slow for sadness.³⁸ The Hok San Association still performs a "linked three-drum" showpiece (連環三通鼓); one performance was filmed at the Ulu Tiram Hok San Association anniversary in Johor on 8 December 2007.³⁹ Multi-drum arrays performed today by Chan Siew Kee, Albert Fong and US teams descend from this format.

The Sar Ping (Lui Pai) lineage

The lineage's full name is 鶴山沙坪呂派獅藝, "Hoksan Sar Ping (Lui Pai) Lion Arts" (Cant. hok6 saan1 saa1 ping4 leoi5 paai3 si1 ngai6).⁴⁰ 呂派 (leoi5 paai3, "Lui Pai", Mand. Lǚ pài) means "the Lui school", named after a Grandmaster Lui. Its world body is the World Sar Ping (Lui Pai) Lion Arts Federation (世界沙坪吕派狮艺总会), founded in 2014 by Robin Chan Siew Kee.⁴⁰³⁸

Chan Siew Kee (陳紹箕, can4 siu6 gei1, Mand. Chén Shàojī) was born in 1947 and began at the Hok San Association at age 8. In 1990 he led the drumming for 200 lions at Singapore's National Day at the Singapore Wushu Federation's invitation; he began taking disciples in 1992; after the 2nd World Dragon and Lion Dance Championship in 2002 he became known as the "World Drum King".³⁸ A 2016 Lianhe Zaobao profile says he coached full-time after 30 years in printing, that his team performed at National Day almost every year from independence to the 1990s, and that he had run seminars in the USA, France, Réunion and Mauritius. He told the paper that his 師公 (his teacher's teacher) fled to Singapore and kept the art alive while the Cultural Revolution buried it in China.⁴¹ He is styled "3rd Generation Inheritor of the Sar Ping (Lui Pai) Lion Arts" and the head (掌門人) of the school.⁴²⁴³

"As soon as he hears the drum, he wants to get up and dance." (一听到鼓声就恨不得马上跟着起舞)

Lianhe Zaobao on Chan Siew Kee, 2016

Below Chan the generations are counted on: the 2023 US seminar billed Master Hiew Yun Cheong (Singapore; head coach of the NUS Lion Dance Team) as a 4th-generation direct disciple and Master Albert Fong Kong Yip (Malaysia) as 5th generation.⁴² In 2007 Master Siow Ho Phiew and his disciples went to Shaping to pay respects at the grave of the late Grand Master Lui on 1 May; Lui's surviving daughter showed them a lion head that had belonged to him.³⁶

Sar Ping and Hok San around the world

Heshan's own literature says the lion "followed Heshan emigrants out of Guangdong to Hong Kong, Macau, Southeast Asia and North America".⁶ The Sar Ping name, though, mostly spread from Singapore through Malaysia, and from there to Australia, Europe and the United States. Two Malaysians were central.

Siow Ho Phiew (蕭斐弘, "Master Siow", "H.P. Siow") teaches "Hok San Sar Ping Lion Arts Lui Lineage (沙坪呂派獅藝)", runs the Wan Seng Hang lion factory and training centre in Shah Alam, leads the Hong Teck (弘德) network, and coached Muar's Kun Seng Keng (關聖宮, "KSK").⁴⁴ A documentary credits him with the first lion-on-poles competition (Malaysia, 1983) and the first plum-blossom wooden poles.³⁶ Chinese Wikipedia says that from 1992, with Kun Seng Keng partners, he standardised Malaysian high-pole lion dance and opened it to all ethnic groups.⁴⁵ Kun Seng Keng won or shared 12 of the 13 Genting World Lion Dance Championships held from 1994 to 2018; the one loss, in 2012, was to Kedah Hong Teck, another Siow-lineage team.⁴⁶ For pole competition see Chapter 14.

Albert Fong Kong Yip (馮廣業) is co-founder, chief instructor and deputy president of Khuan Loke (群樂) Dragon and Lion Dance Association in Sungai Way, Petaling Jaya, founded by his father Fong Tin Low. He started at 13 and had 34 years' experience in 2023.⁴⁷ He is the Sar Ping master most US teams have seen in person, through his three-drum array in Madison in 2015 and the Houston seminar in 2023. The June 2023 seminar announcement says Chan Siew Kee hand-picked him and Hiew Yun Cheong to teach it, and lists his posts as head coach of the Khuan Loke Lion Dance Academy, secretary general of the Malaysia Lion Dance Federation (MLDF) and of the Selangor Dragon and Lion Dance Sports Association, and director of dragon and lion dance at Wushu Kuala Lumpur; a September 2022 Yahoo Malaysia feature also calls him MLDF secretary general.^42,48 His blog (馮廣業, Cant. fung4 gwong2 jip6, Mand. Féng Guǎngyè) documents an earlier US trip: photos captioned "2013 USA Lion Dance Seminar" sit beside 2013 letters from the mayor of Seattle and King County, and 2014 photos show lion dance training in Yangon and Manila and for a Réunion Island team, though the blog does not say where the Réunion training took place.⁴⁹ The blog also lists a 2015 Ten Outstanding Young Malaysians award for cultural achievement and an undated appointment as honorary overseas adviser to a US dragon and lion dance federation.⁴⁹ His Instagram bio (@master_albertfong, 895 posts on 9 October 2026) adds secretary general of the World Lion Dance Federation (WLDF), a title no other source found gives him, and its recent posts mention an international referee training day in Shanghai, a dragon and lion dance exchange in Guilin, a 2026 international lion and dragon dance festival in Quy Nhon, Vietnam, and a dinner dated 6 September 2026 for Chan Siew Kee's 80th birthday.⁵⁰

Sar Ping in the United States

Hok San reached the US in waves. David Lei says he did not see a Hok San lion in San Francisco "until 1973 when the Yau Kung Moon lion dance troupe first introduced this because their style is from Hok San", and that Hok San "have their own drumming beats" Chinese Lion Dance in the American Context @ 21:52.⁵ The Sar Ping name itself came much later, from Singapore and Malaysia rather than from the Hong Kong sifus of the 1970s. For the wider US picture see Chapter 13.

Practitioners describe what draws them in the same terms. Nelson Ferreira: "Lion art really is the expression of the lion as being a live creature," and the aim is "to trick the audience into believing that's a real creature".⁷² J Lantry in Phoenix: "When you see Sar Ping done really well, it's almost like you lose yourself in this illusion of a lion."⁶⁴

The Sar Ping curriculum

Nelson Ferreira describes the Sar Ping curriculum at his Madison school, which learned it from Chan Siew Kee and Albert Fong, as 18 drum patterns, 18 core steps that match them, seven postures, eight lion actions and six traditional sets Zhong Yi Kung Fu Association talk @ 31:20.³

The key teaching fact is that in Sar Ping the beat carries a fixed meaning. Ferreira on PBS: "We can't modify what that particular beat is because there's a meaning behind the beat and there's a movement that the lion does with the beat."⁷² J Lantry, asked what switching to Sar Ping taught his team: "What steps the lion does to certain beats to mean certain things."⁶⁴ This is the opposite of the street practice described by many Fut San and Choy Li Fut sources, where "the musicians always follow the lion's activities".⁷⁴ Chapter 7 covers who leads whom in more detail.

Hok San drumming also sounds different. A practitioner blog says it "is almost completely different than Fut San lion dance drumming... a lot of the beats represent a real heartbeat", with the drummer returning again and again to a "doong doong" double beat while circling his arms; a Singapore student exhibition repeats the point.⁷⁵³⁸

The 18 routes (十八路鼓)

"Eighteen-road drum" (十八路鼓, Cant. sap6 baat3 lou6 gu2, Mand. shíbā lù gǔ) is the name the Kinmen troupe and Leroy Lee use for the set.⁵⁴⁶⁸ 路 means road or route: each pattern is a stretch of the lion's journey. Four independent sets of names were compared to rebuild the list.

Route numbers in the table below follow Kenneth Chuen's list, which gives all 18 in order. Notation is Leroy Lee's: X is a stroke, - a rest, bars between pipes. The descriptions of "what the lion does" come from the names themselves and the Heshan rules; where they are this guide's reading, they say so. Characters marked with a slash are the main variants; the contested callouts after the table give who says what.

How the four sources line up

A dash means the item does not appear in the titles collected, not that the lineage lacks it; the UTAR series, for instance, may continue past #13.

Leroy Lee's six videos: A 三敬禮, 菊花頭起獅, 探步 @ 00:00; B 中展, 半展, 下展 @ 00:00; C 直展, 上展, 察洞 @ 00:00; D 上登山, 照水影, 戲水 @ 00:00; E 下平陽, 七節伴丹練, 梅花展 @ 00:00; F 密點, 疏點, 三拋, 七星 @ 00:00.^689394959284 Kinmen's full run: 金門天震堂鼓藝教學影片 - 十八路鼓 @ 00:00.⁵⁴

Names and glosses that vary

Spellings and English glosses of the route names vary from one source to the next. The table gives the reading that the written sources support in the cases most likely to cause confusion.

The story the 18 routes tell

Read in order, the route names tell a story. A lion salutes, is raised, and takes its first probing steps. It unfolds and shows itself at middle, half, low, straight and high levels. It comes to a cave and inspects it, then leaps. It climbs a mountain, stops at the water and sees its own reflection, tests and plays with the water, and comes down to the level plain. The seven-section and seven-star drums close the set, and the whole journey is stitched together with sparse walking beats and dense transition rolls.

No source found states this whole narrative in one place; it is an interpretation built from the names in the Kinmen, Leroy Lee and Kenneth Chuen sets. But every piece of it is supported by something.

• The routes are meant to be acted. Ferreira teaches "18 core steps that match the 18 patterns of the drums", and says the beats cannot change because each has "a movement that the lion does with the beat".³⁷²
• The lion reacts to its landscape by rule. Heshan's seven musts include "sees water, must play" and "sees steps, must probe" and "sees an object, must be suspicious".⁶ The water routes and the probing step act out exactly these.
• Caves and mountains were the traditional set. A Singapore history notes that the main props of traditional lion performance were caves and bridges, standing for high mountains and big bridges.¹¹ The Hok San Association remembers one past master, Li Wenzhong, for "Leaving the Cave" (出洞).³³
• Other lineages tell the same arc. Shaolin Wahnam, a different (Malaysian) lineage, names its drama stages "emerging from den, presenting greetings, showing majesty, wandering joyfully, viewing and testing formations" and so on to capturing the green.⁹⁷ Malaysia's heritage register describes a performance that begins with the lion waking "mimicking the movements of a lion cub learning to walk".³²
• Climbing a hill was a Heshan ritual. The 1888 Singapore inscription (date disputed, see above) describes Heshan men who "danced the lion up the hill" (舞獅登山) to honour their dead at hillside graves.¹¹ Whether this is a root of the 登山 route is speculation.

The 展 routes deserve a word. 展 means to unfold or spread, as in spreading wings. The lion is not "testing" in the English sense so much as presenting itself at a series of heights, the way a cat stretches and shows itself on leaving its resting place. A 2008 study of Guangdong lion drumming lists "high-frame", "middle-frame" and "low-frame" drums (高架鼓, 中架鼓, 下架鼓) as standard calls, which suggests that drumming at set heights is old and widespread.⁸⁵ Whether Sar Ping's five displays descend from those calls is not documented.

What it means for teaching

The practical point of the story is that a Sar Ping drummer is narrating, not keeping time. The suggestions below are this guide's, drawn from the sources, and are pitched at a beginners' drumming class.

1. Tell the story before the drum. In a children's class, a journey is easier to hold than a list of eighteen names. Draw the map on a whiteboard: cave, mountain, pool, plain. Then hang each route on a place.
2. Start with cymbals and gong. Sources across traditions agree on this order. Songgang's national inheritor Wen Yansen: "you must play cymbals before you can drum"; McGuire's Toronto club taught kung fu, then lion, then cymbals, then gong, then drum.¹⁰¹⁷⁴ In the Hok San three bows, cymbals and gong only play the three single strokes and stop on the rolls, which makes it an ideal first piece.⁵⁸
3. Teach the bow, then the linking beats. Follow the UTAR order: three salutes, raising the lion, then dense and sparse beats. Every later route is entered by "dense, sparse, then the route", so the linking beats are the grammar of the whole set.
4. Teach the sparse beat quietly. The UK Hok San tutorial keeps it near 60 beats a minute, "fairly quiet compared to the other beats", and warns that playing everything loud "becomes old, real quick" Secret tips for shu dian @ 00:48.⁹⁰ Children love to hit hard; the walking beat is where they learn dynamics.
5. Speak it before you play it. Use the route names, in order, for the sequence, and spoken vocables for each rhythm. Patterns have always been passed on orally.⁷⁴
6. Let students play the lion to the drum. The 8 emotions and 7 musts give children something to act while classmates drum. A drummer who has walked the probing step will play it differently.

What is still unresolved

• The characters for routes #7, #9, #10, #13 and #15 differ between branches (above).
• Whether the Lui Pai 18 and Liang Zhaofu's "18 Continual Drumming Method" are the same set.
• Grandmaster Lui's dates, and the full generation chain to Chan Siew Kee.
• Which seven postures Ferreira's curriculum teaches, and which five stances and eighteen steps make up Heshan's 五馬十八步.
• Whether Sar Ping routes carry fixed shouts. Auto-captions of Albert Fong's three-drum array catch shouted syllables, but no written source describes a Sar Ping shout.⁶⁰
• Feng Gengchang's teacher and death year, and whether Heshan lion art has any national listing.
• Full rhythmic notation exists only for some routes (Leroy Lee's descriptions). Video titles such as BigDrum Channel's "EP2 Heshan Sar Ping 18-road drum: are you playing it wrong?" suggest teachers are still arguing over details.