Wu Wen
01 · Lineage & Regional School
Wu Wen, Male, Han, from Jiulongpo, Chongqing, is a fifth-batch national representative bearer of Zoumazhen Folk Tales (Ⅰ-17). The tradition is documented in Jiulongpo, Chongqing. Within the regional tradition and school record of Zoumazhen Folk Tales in Jiulongpo, Chongqing: Zouma stories have distinctive local features, taking Ba cultural relics as their core and combining the flavour of an eastern Sichuan town. Their stories mostly arise from the hills and waters, temples, old roads and horse-trading routes around the Zouma market, and the legends of the Ba people's dragon and snake totem, legends of scenery and stories of life interweave, forming a pattern of circulation with both mountain and trading colour.
02 · Mastery & Signature Works
Male, of the Han ethnic group, born in May 1959, a native of Chongqing. He is a storyteller of Zouma Town folk tales. He studied under Wei Xiande, the fifth-generation transmitter, and has practised storytelling for more than forty years, transmitting more than a thousand tales and collecting, collating and creating more than five hundred. He has held nearly a thousand storytelling performances in more than three hundred schools in Chongqing. He has told stories in about seven hundred episodes on programmes such as Yan Zi Jiang Hu on Chongqing Television. The Jian Zheng programme of China Central Television and Lu Yu You Yue on Phoenix Television Hong Kong made the feature film Gu Shi Da Wang: Wu Wen (The Story King: Wu Wen) about him, and China Record Group and other organizations have released twenty-nine albums of audio tapes and discs of his storytelling. Within the documented technical tradition of Zoumazhen Folk Tales in Jiulongpo, Chongqing: Because the living environment and life experience of the Zouma people differ from those of ordinary people, the stories they create and tell show certain characteristics. Zouma folk stories are miscellaneous in content and diverse in type; besides the general types of folk legend such as myth and immortal tales, legends of scenery, legends of plants and animals, legends of custom and stories of life, they also hold other distinctive cultural information, such as the legend of the dragon and snake totem of the Ba people. As an important relic of ancient Ba culture, such stories are considerable in number. The town has three hundred and sixteen folk story-tellers, of whom two can tell a thousand stories, three can tell five hundred to a thousand, and ten can tell two hundred to five hundred. Zouma folk stories have such features as diversity of time and occasion of telling, multiple origins of story composition and coexistence of native and foreign culture. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "The Legend of the Dragon and Snake Totem of the Ba People": An ancient Ba cultural relic held in the Zouma stories. "Wei Xiande's Folk Story Collection": The story collection of the teller published by Chongqing Press in 1989. "The Ghost Son": A story told by Liu Yuanyang and included in Zouma Town Folk Stories. "Xu Banwen and Xu Banxian": A story told by Liu Yuanyang and included in Zouma Town Folk Stories.
The Legend of the Dragon and Snake Totem of the Ba People
An ancient Ba cultural relic held in the Zouma stories.
Wei Xiande's Folk Story Collection
The story collection of the teller published by Chongqing Press in 1989.
The Ghost Son
A story told by Liu Yuanyang and included in Zouma Town Folk Stories.
Xu Banwen and Xu Banxian
A story told by Liu Yuanyang and included in Zouma Town Folk Stories.
03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status
He is a representative bearer of Zouma Town folk tales, a fifth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. In 2013 he was named a Star of Mass Culture by the Ministry of Culture. In 2014 he was awarded the title China Story King by the China Quyi Artists Association. In 2016 he received the Performance Award of the Ninth China Quyi Peony Award, conferred by the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and the China Quyi Artists Association.
04 · Associated Heritage Item Dossier
Historical origin
The exact age of the origin of Zouma stories cannot be verified, but the Zouma market was founded in the late Ming and early Qing and quickly flourished, and the stories should have developed with it, so that their emergence and formation have a history of at least four or five hundred years. When the three great collections of Chinese folk literature were compiled in the 1980s, the catalogue of folk stories collected in the town reached eleven thousand nine hundred and fifteen, of which nine thousand seven hundred and fourteen were recorded in full; more than three thousand folk ballads, four thousand proverbs and four thousand riddles, sayings and colloquialisms were also collected. In 1990 Zouma town was named a home of folk literature by the Chongqing cultural bureau; in 1992 Gongnong village was named a Chinese folk story village; and in 1998 UNESCO and the Chinese Folk Literature and Art Association jointly gave Wei Xiande the title of Chinese folk story-teller, ten people in all nationwide.
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.
| Bearer | Declared area | Roster code | Relation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wei Xiande | Jiulongpo, Chongqing | 01-0014 | Same declared area |
| Liu Yuanyang | Jiulongpo, Chongqing | 03-0782 | Same declared area |
| Wu Wen | Jiulongpo, Chongqing | 05-1994 | This page |
06 · Archival Sources & Bibliography
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 and the associated project dossier, organized by topic and translated into English. 阅读中文版。