Yangko is one of the folk recreational activities in Northeast China originating from productive labor. Folk dances in Northeast China exist in various forms, including Yangko, dragon lantern dance, land boat dance, catching butterfly dance, wrestling, playing fancy sticks and walking on stilts. Most of the time, all the dances are performed together and are generally called Yangko.

Yangko is the artistic fortune created and accumulated by laboring people in North China. It originates from the labor of rice transplanting and plowing. At the same time, it is also related to the songs people sang to pray to the agricultural gods for harvest or the elimination of disasters in ancient times. Absorbing the skills and arts of agricultural songs, water chestnut collecting songs, folk martial arts, acrobatics and operas during its development, it has evolved into a kind of folk song dance today.