Miao Gensheng

01 · Lineage & Regional School

He began studying the art at the age of 30 under Lü Da, a yangge performer from Nanshe Village, and took the stage name Songshushu (Pine Tree). Within the regional tradition and school record of Yangge Opera in Qi, Shanxi: Qitai yangge centres on Qi county and Taigu and reaches Wenshui, Jiaocheng, Pingyao, Jiexiu and more than ten surrounding counties and districts; local differences of dialect and custom give slight variations in tune and performance, together forming the Jinzhong yangge distribution area. In the Zhengtong reign of the Ming, yangge transmitted orally by folk artists began to spread across the Jinzhong plain. By the Daoguang reign of the Qing, Qi county already had such yangge troupes as Tongle She, Qitai Xile Ban and Qitai Dewei She. Afterwards the artists gradually blended dance, martial arts and various skills into yangge, developing “ground yangge” and “street yangge”, and further drew on the content and forms of folk art from elsewhere, so that yangge evolved from street singing into a local short opera with more than three hundred plays. Drawing on the Shanxi volume of the Annals of Chinese Xiqu, yangge was already current on the Jinzhong plain in the Zhengtong reign of the Ming and by the Daoguang reign Qi county had such troupes; its distribution centred on Qi county and Taigu and reached more than ten surrounding counties and districts including Wenshui and Jiaocheng.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Drawing on his deep experience of rural life and his plain-spoken pursuit of "how to sing it better," he inherited in full from Lü Da, and further developed, Chutian (Hoeing the Fields), a folk play from Gulan Village that had never been taught to outsiders, attaining an artistic level that others found hard to match. Within a decade or so, through diligent practice and intensive study, he made Chutian famous throughout the three prefectures and seven counties of central Shanxi. While Songshushu lived, no one dared to perform a version of Chutian of their own, and an old saying circulated among the people of the Qitai region: "You may fall and die on the way to the temple fair, but you must not miss Songshushu's Ku Ca." Within the documented technical tradition of Yangge Opera in Qi, Shanxi: Qitai yangge is a local short opera circulating among the people of Shanxi; it began as a folk ditty sung by farmers during their work, traceable to the Tang and Song. In this process a Qitai yangge distribution area formed, centred on Qi county and Taigu and reaching more than ten surrounding counties and districts including Wenshui and Jiaocheng. It combines music, dance, singing, recitation, acting and martial yangge, taking the life stories of the farmers of Qi county, Taigu and Jinzhong as its subject, with fine and pleasing tunes, lively language, plain and rough performance and a strong flavour of life and local character, much loved by audiences in its areas and of some research value for Jinzhong folklore and the emergence of opera. Its traditional subjects are mostly drawn from rural daily life and family ethics, its lyrics strongly improvisatory, and artists often compose and sing at any time according to what they see and hear—one reason its repertory keeps growing. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Chu Tian (Hoeing the Field)": A traditional Qitai yangge short play fully inherited and developed by the inheritor Miao Gensheng, once famous across the three prefectures and seven counties of central Shanxi. "Mai Ronghua (Selling Velvet Flowers)": A traditional Qitai yangge play drawn from village market life. "Da Tiaocai (Picking Greens)": A traditional domestic sketch of Qitai yangge, a piece the inheritor Sun Guiming is skilled in. "Tou Nangua (Stealing Pumpkins)": A traditional chou-role sketch of Qitai yangge with a strong flavour of rural life.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

Male, Han ethnicity, born in September 1922 and deceased in February 2012, a native of Qi County, Shanxi Province. National representative bearer of Yangge Opera (Qitai Yangge), a third-batch national intangible cultural heritage project.

04 · Associated Heritage Item Dossier

05 · Fellow National Bearers Lineage

National representative bearers recorded under the same item code, ordered from the first to the sixth batch. Batch order is not a teacher–student relationship.

06 · Archival Sources & Bibliography

1. Miao Gensheng · National Representative Bearer Archive