Liu Defang
Mastery, Signature Works & Repertoire
Male, of the Han ethnic group, born in 1938, a native of Yichang, Hubei. Liu Defang has loved folk tales since childhood. He has long been engaged in the collection, collation, and transmission of folk stories, and he can now tell more than four hundred of them. These stories have a distinctly local character and a high cultural quality; most of them reflect social life or celebrate love between men and women. Poems and couplets are frequently woven into the stories, which appeal to refined and popular tastes alike and suit listeners of all ages. The folk jokes Liu Defang tells set his audiences roaring with laughter, while his tales of filial devotion enlighten and educate the young. They have won warm acclaim from the masses, and experts of the China Folk Artists Association have praised them as "unmatched." He has published the DVD collection Liu Defang's House of Laughter, and his representative works include Wild Mountain Jokes.
Honors & Recognition
A national representative bearer of the Xiabaoping Folk Tales, a first-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. In 2000 he was awarded the title of "Outstanding Folk Artist" by the Yichang Municipal Bureau of Culture; in 2001 he was named a "Folk Storyteller of Hubei Province"; and in 2005 he received the honorary title of "Chinese Folk Storyteller" from the China Folk Artists Association.
References & Archival Sources
Representative Items of This Bearer
Profile
This static English edition is rendered at the edge for search engines, AI crawlers and readers without JavaScript. Compiled from official national representative bearer archival records, organized by topic and translated into English. 阅读中文版。