Gerijiancan

01 · Lineage & Regional School

In 1997 he was awarded the title Advanced Individual by the State Ethnic Affairs Commission, the Ministry of Culture, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles. Within the regional tradition and school record of Gesar Epic Tradition in Qinghai: In Qinghai the Gesar circulates mainly among the Tibetan-concentrated areas of Yushu, Golog and Haixi, and such famous artists as Cairang Wangdui and Dawa Zhaba have emerged there, making it an important area of the epic's living transmission. The earliest surviving manuscript of the epic was completed in the fourteenth century, and the Beijing woodblock edition of 1716, The Life of the Holy Lord Gesar Khan of the Ten Directions, is its earliest printed version. Since the 1950s, influenced by the process of modernisation, the ways of life of the Tibetan and Mongol and other peoples have changed and the professional ranks of artists have begun to shrink.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

He is a narrator and singer of Gesar (Geser). He became a monk at the age of sixteen and belongs to the treasure-discovering (terton) performers. In 1992 he was engaged as a staff member of the Golog Prefecture Mass Art Centre and began to write down Gesar. He has completed more than twenty parts and has published twenty-eight, including Dun Shi Yu Yan Shou Ji (The Prophecy of the Dun Clan), A Sai Yang Zong, Jiang Ling Da Zhan (The Great Battle of Jiangling), Ni Po Luo Yang Zong and Mo Ling Da Zhan (The Great Battle of Moling). The Gesar he transcribes has a complete narrative structure, tortuous plots and beautiful language, and he is known as the performer who can never finish writing. Within the documented technical tradition of Gesar Epic Tradition in Qinghai: The epic Gesar, sung for a thousand years, circulates among the Tibetan, Mongol, Tu, Yugur, Naxi and Pumi peoples of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau of China and tells, by word of mouth, of the heroic deeds of King Gesar, who descended to the lower world, subdued demons and monsters, restrained the strong and helped the weak, unified the various divisions and at last returned to heaven. The Gesar is the longest in sung length of all the epics so far discovered in the world; it is at once a crucible of ethnic cultural diversity and a witness to the sustainable development of the folk cultures of many peoples. This oral epic shared by many peoples is the crystallisation of grassland nomadic culture and represents the highest achievement of the ancient Tibetan and Mongol folk culture and oral narrative art. Countless wandering singers have inherited its chanting and performance from generation to generation. The Gesar is the main vehicle of the religious belief, indigenous knowledge, folk wisdom, ethnic memory and mother-tongue expression of the communities concerned, a source of inspiration for the creation of such traditional folk arts as thangka, Tibetan opera and tanchang, and at the same time a living spring for modern art forms. For a thousand years the epic artists have played the role of telling history, conveying knowledge, regulating conduct, maintaining the community and adjusting life, gently educating the members of the nation through the epic. Besides this, the epic has spread beyond the borders to Mongolia, the Buryat and Kalmyk regions of Russia and India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan and other countries and neighbouring regions south of the Himalayas. The influence of this cross-cultural transmission is extraordinarily rare. The Gesar artists are the most direct creators, transmitters and spreaders of the epic; the great majority of them are illiterate, yet they have extraordinary memory and narrative creativity, and an ordinary epic performance reaches tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of lines. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Cairang Wangdui's Sung Texts": Representative works including The Battle of Tuoling, The Five Auspicious Blessings and The Southern Iron Treasure Lineage. "Dawa Zhaba's Sung Texts": He reports being able to sing more than a hundred and seventy parts, of which more than twenty have been recorded. "The Divinely-Granted Transmission of Artists": Qinghai artists often speak of a divinely-granted transmission, forming a distinctive type of transmission.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

Male, of the Tibetan ethnic group, born in November 1967, died in May 2019, a native of Gande County, Qinghai Province. He is a representative bearer of Gesar (Geser), a fifth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. He actively trained performers of Gesar (Geser).

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. Gerijiancan · National Representative Bearer Archive