Lion dance (traditional Chinese: 舞獅; simplified Chinese: 舞狮; pinyin: wǔshī) is a form of traditional dance in Chinese culture and other Asian countries in which performers mimic a lion's movements in a lion costume to bring good luck and fortune. The lion dance is usually performed during the Chinese New Year and other traditional, cultural and religious festivals. It may also be performed at important occasions such as business opening events, special celebrations or wedding ceremonies, or may be used to honor special guests by the Chinese communities.

The Chinese lion dance is normally performed by two dancers, one of whom manipulates the head while the other manipulates the tail of the lion. It is distinguishable from the dragon dance which is performed by many people who hold the long sinuous body of the dragon on poles. Some fundamental movements of the lion dance can be found in Chinese martial arts, and it is commonly performed to a vigorous drumbeat with gongs and cymbals.

There are many forms of lion dance in China, but two main forms of the lion dance are the Northern Lion and the Southern Lion. Around the world, especially in Southeast Asia, the Southern Lion predominates as it was spread by Chinese diaspora communities who are historically mostly of Southern Chinese origin. Versions of lion dance related to the Chinese lion are also found in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Besides the Chinese-based lion dance, other forms of lion dance also exist in India, Indonesia, and East Africa.

There has been an old tradition in China of dancers wearing masks to resemble animals or mythical beasts since antiquity, and performances described in ancient texts such as Shujing where wild beasts and phoenix danced may have been masked dances. In Qin dynasty sources, dancers performing exorcism rituals were described as wearing bearskin masks, and it was also mentioned in Han dynasty texts that "mime people" (象人) performed as fish, dragons, and phoenixes.

However, the lion is not native to China (a species found in Northeast China, Panthera youngi, had long become extinct), and the lion dance therefore has been suggested to have originated outside of China from countries such as India or Persia, and introduced via Central Asia. According to ethnomusicologist Laurence Picken, the Chinese word for lion itself, shi (獅, written as 師 in the early periods), may have been derived from the Persian word šer. The earliest use of the word shizi to mean "lion" was in Han dynasty texts and had strong associations with Central Asia (an even earlier but obsolete term for lion was suanni (狻麑 or 狻猊), and lions were presented to the Han court by emissaries from Central Asia and the Parthian Empire.

Detailed descriptions of lion dance appeared during the Tang dynasty and it was already recognized by writers and poets then as a foreign dance, however, lion dance may have been recorded in China as early as the third century AD where "lion acts" were referred to by a Three Kingdoms scholar Meng Kang in a commentary on Hanshu. In early periods, it was associated with Buddhism: it was recorded in a Northern Wei text, Description of Buddhist Temples in Luoyang (洛陽伽藍記), that a parade for a statue of Buddha of a temple was led by a lion to drive away evil spirits. An alternative suggestion is therefore that the dance may have developed from a local Chinese tradition that appropriated the Buddhist symbolism of the lion.

There were different versions of the dance in the Tang dynasty. In the Tang court, the lion dance was called the "Great Peace Music" (太平樂, Taiping yue) or the "lion dance of the Five Directions" (五方師子舞) where five large lions of different colours and expressing different moods were each led and manipulated on rope by two persons, and accompanied by 140 singers. In another account, the 5 lions were described as each over 3 metres tall and each had 12 "lion lads", who may tease the lions with red whisks. Another version of the lion dance was described by the Tang poet Bai Juyi in his poem "Western Liang Arts" (西凉伎), where the dance was performed by two hu (胡, meaning here non-Han people from Central Asia) dancers who wore a lion costume made of a wooden head, a silk tail and furry body, with eyes gilded with gold and teeth plated with silver as well as ears that moved, a form that resembles today's lion dance. By the eighth century, this lion dance had reached Japan. During the Song dynasty the lion dance was commonly performed in festivals and it was known as the Northern Lion during the Southern Song.

The Southern Lion is a later development in the south of China originating in the Guangdong province. There are a number of myths associated with the origin of the Southern Lion: one story relates that the dance originated as a celebration in a village where a mythical monster called Nian was successfully driven away; another has it that the Qianlong Emperor dreamt of an auspicious animal while on a tour of Southern China, and ordered that the image of the animal be recreated and used during festivals. However it is likely that the Southern Lion of Guangzhou is an adaptation of the Northern Lion to local myths and characteristics, perhaps during the Ming dynasty.