Liu Chunai

01 · Lineage & Regional School

At the age of eleven she was admitted to the youth training class of the Tianjin Quyi Troupe and studied Luo-school Jingyun Dagu under Luo Yusheng. Within the regional tradition and school record of Jingyun Dagu Drum Balladry in Quyituan, Tianjin: Tianjin is the home ground of the “Luo school” of Jingyun dagu, and the Tianjin Quyi Troupe concentrates on training successors of the Luo school. In the late Qing and the early Republican period, drum-book artists Hu Jintang (stage name “Hu Shi”), Huo Mingliang, Song Yukun (stage name “Song Wu”) and later Liu Baoquan and others reformed the wooden-clapper dagu of the Hejian area of Hebei. They added the sihu and the pipa to the original sanxian to form the accompaniment, at the same time changing the Hejian dialect used for singing into Beijing pronunciation, and further absorbing the diction techniques and part of the vocal styles of Beijing opera, making extensive use of the “qingyin zidishu” script books that had circulated among the sons of the Eight Banners in the Qing dynasty. Out of this reform Jingyun dagu came into being with its distinctive flavour.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Female, Han ethnicity, born in March 1949 in Tianjin. She is a National First-Class Actor. Her voice is broad and rich, and she is naturally gifted; she has inherited the spirit of Luo-school Jingyun Dagu while continuing to explore, singing with emotion guiding the voice, sincere and heartfelt, full of feeling and passion, and possessing a distinctive charm. After retiring she opened a Jingyun Dagu class at a university for older adults, spreading quyi and earning wide public acclaim. Within the documented technical tradition of Jingyun Dagu Drum Balladry in Quyituan, Tianjin: Jingyun dagu is mainly popular in Beijing, Tianjin, northern China and the Northeast; in the course of history it has also borne such names as “Jingyin dagu” and “Xiaokou dagu”. Jingyun dagu combines speech and song, with speech inside the singing and singing inside the speech, so that refined and popular taste are both satisfied. A single vocal style is often used for many different pieces, and the performance lays stress on rendering the spirit and the mood. As soon as it appeared it quickly won over its audience with a style that joins the firm to the gentle. Over the following decades the genre kept maturing, and important performance schools appeared one after another, among them the “Bai school” founded by Bai Yunpeng and the “Luo school” founded by Luo Yusheng (stage name “Xiaocaiwu”). The sung texts of Jingyun dagu basically take seven-syllable lines, and from time to time inserted syllables, padding syllables and piled-up short lines are worked into a line; each set of sung texts runs to roughly a hundred and fifty lines. Its rhyme-shifting follows the thirteen rhyme categories of Beijing pronunciation, and a sung passage is generally carried on one rhyme from beginning to end. Rhymed speech lays stress on intonation and flavour, half spoken and half sung, and joins the vocal style with great naturalness. In performance one performer stands and sings and strikes the clappers to keep the rhythm, and at the side there are generally three accompanists on the large sanxian, the sihu and the pipa, sometimes with a low-register hu added. Jingyun dagu lays stress on singing; its vocal styles belong to the clapper-based system, and it is used exclusively to sing short works. Its repertoire consists mainly of more than a hundred traditional narrative pieces such as “The Single Sword Meeting”, “The Battle of Changsha”, “White Emperor City”, “The Killing of Tang Qin”, “Visiting Qingwen”, “Daiyu Burns Her Drafts” and “Homeward by Boat in Wind and Rain”, together with short pieces that describe scenery and express feeling, and newly composed works on modern and historical subjects. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "The Single Sword Meeting": “The Single Sword Meeting” is one of the works in this repertoire: the repertoire of Jingyun dagu consists mainly of more than a hundred traditional narrative pieces such as “The Single Sword Meeting”, “The Battle of Changsha”, “White Emperor City”, “The Killing of Tang Qin”, “Visiting Qingwen”, “Daiyu Burns Her Drafts” and “Homeward by Boat in Wind and Rain”, together with short pieces that describe scenery and express feeling, and newly composed works on modern and historical subjects. "The Battle of Changsha": “The Battle of Changsha” is one of the works in this repertoire: the repertoire of Jingyun dagu consists mainly of more than a hundred traditional narrative pieces such as “The Single Sword Meeting”, “The Battle of Changsha”, “White Emperor City”, “The Killing of Tang Qin”, “Visiting Qingwen”, “Daiyu Burns Her Drafts” and “Homeward by Boat in Wind and Rain”, together with short pieces that describe scenery and express feeling, and newly composed works on modern and historical subjects. "White Emperor City": “White Emperor City” is one of the works in this repertoire: the repertoire of Jingyun dagu consists mainly of more than a hundred traditional narrative pieces such as “The Single Sword Meeting”, “The Battle of Changsha”, “White Emperor City”, “The Killing of Tang Qin”, “Visiting Qingwen”, “Daiyu Burns Her Drafts” and “Homeward by Boat in Wind and Rain”, together with short pieces that describe scenery and express feeling, and newly composed works on modern and historical subjects. "The Killing of Tang Qin": “The Killing of Tang Qin” is one of the works in this repertoire: the repertoire of Jingyun dagu consists mainly of more than a hundred traditional narrative pieces such as “The Single Sword Meeting”, “The Battle of Changsha”, “White Emperor City”, “The Killing of Tang Qin”, “Visiting Qingwen”, “Daiyu Burns Her Drafts” and “Homeward by Boat in Wind and Rain”, together with short pieces that describe scenery and express feeling, and newly composed works on modern and historical subjects.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

She is a national representative bearer of Jingyun Dagu Drum Balladry, a fourth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. In 2000, for her Jingyun Dagu work Jiange Wenling (Hearing the Bell at Jiange), she won the Performance Award at the first China Quyi Peony Awards, presented by the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and the China Quyi Artists Association. She taught for more than twenty years at the China Northern Quyi School, training six cohorts of Luo-school Jingyun Dagu students.

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. Liu Chunai · National Representative Bearer Archive