Zhang Caiping

01 · Lineage & Regional School

At sixteen she was admitted to the Yanbei Branch of the Shanxi Provincial Art School and studied under Zhang Guirong, a celebrated performer of Beilubangzi, specialising in qingyi roles; she later received guidance from such famous teachers as Jia Guilin, Liu Lingfeng and Han Xiuzhen, and at the same time absorbed the melodic articulation methods of earlier artists including Wang Yushan and Liu Zhenfang, gradually forming a singing style of her own. Within the regional tradition and school record of Beilubangzi in Datong, Shanxi: The repertory of the “Great Northern Road” includes both the fine pieces common to bangzi opera and distinctive pieces reflecting local history, such as Walking in the Snow, whose “walking in the snow” scene has been performed without break and is highly influential in the areas where it is found. The Yunzhou dao (Great Northern Road) of Beilu bangzi is greatly welcomed by the people of its areas of distribution and plays a leading role in the prosperity of local opera. Beilu bangzi is found in northern Shanxi, central and western Inner Mongolia and Zhangjiakou in Hebei and, according to region and lineage, divides into schools such as the Yunzhou dao of Datong (Great Northern Road) and the Daizhou dao (Small Northern Road, also called “erhou”) around Daixian, each with its own singing, repertory and performance. It was officially named Beilu bangzi in 1954. Drawing on the Shanxi volume of the Annals of Chinese Xiqu, Beilu bangzi branched off from Shanshan bangzi and had already formed an independent “upper-road tune” in northern Shanxi and inside and outside the Yanmen Pass by the mid-Qing, developing in parallel with zhonglu bangzi; in 1954 the opera world formally named it Beilu bangzi.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

She is a woman of the Han ethnic group, born in October 1960 in Huairen County, Shanxi Province. She is a National First-Class Actor. She has inherited the “ke ke qiang”, the most characteristic vocal style of Beilubangzi, and has broken through the traditional manner of singing that was “more firmness than beauty”; in performance she inherits vertically and draws horizontally, is skilled in water-sleeve and stage-walk techniques, and has created more than a hundred artistic images. Her representative pieces include The Bloody Handprint (Xue Shou Yin), Wang Baochuan, The Song of the Lute and the Reed Pipe (Qin Jia Fu), Selling the Seedling Boy (Mai Miao Lang), The Jade Hall in Spring (Yu Tang Chun) and The Love of Green Leaves (Lü Ye Qing). For many years she has devoted herself to training talent, personally teaching her representative pieces and traditional vocal styles, and several of her disciples have become leading performers of their troupes. Within the documented technical tradition of Beilubangzi in Datong, Shanxi: Beilu bangzi is the “upper-road tune” that split off from “Shanshan bangzi”, also called “northern-road tune” or “northern-road opera”. It is found in northern Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, north-western Hebei and parts of Shaanxi. The Yunzhou dao (Great Northern Road) of Beilu bangzi is one of its more influential schools, widely distributed and distinct from the other schools in singing, music, performance and repertory through its frontier character. Its singing is marked by the “ke-ke tune” (also hai-hai), high-pitched and vigorous with florid passages and angular rhythm; the civil section uses banhu and erxian and the martial section marks the beat with the bangzi, the main roles being xusheng, qingyi and hualian, with an emphasis on stance and bearing. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Zou Xueshan (Walking in the Snow)": A distinctive piece reflecting local history; its “walking in the snow” scene has been staged without break and is highly influential in the areas where the genre is found. "Xueshou Yin (The Bloody Handprint)": A frequently staged traditional piece of Beilu bangzi and one of the representative works of the inheritor Zhang Caiping. "Yutangchun": A traditional dan-role piece of Beilu bangzi and one of Zhang Caiping's representative works.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

She is a national representative bearer of Beilubangzi, a fourth-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. Zhang Caiping · National Representative Bearer Archive