Cengxiangtai

01 · Lineage & Regional School

As a child he attended a traditional private school; at the age of fifteen he left school and was apprenticed to Liu Chaoxun to learn carpentry and the Hecai ballads. Within the regional tradition and school record of Changshan Hecai Ballads in Changshan, Zhejiang: They have rich content and forms of expression, touching on every aspect of daily life; they embody the people's wisdom and their longing for a good life, are deeply loved by the local people, and have been transmitted without a break for several hundred years. The strong interaction further shows how beloved the Changshan hecai ballads are in the life of the local people. Third, they have a strong local colour, combining local culture and folk customs with natural scenery. The hecai singer must be a locally respected elder; a person of improper conduct cannot become a hecai singer. According to the Changshan County Gazetteer of the thirteenth year of the Wanli reign of the Ming, 1585, the Qiuchuan Town Gazetteer and many genealogies, the folk custom of singing hecai ballads at the wedding-night teasing of the bridal chamber in Qiuchuan town of Changshan county, Zhejiang, has a history of four or five hundred years. The custom of hecai at beam-raising is older still: as early as the Northern Wei, Wen Zisheng had his “Prayer Text for Raising the Beam at the Changhe Gate”, called by people “the mother of beam-raising texts”.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Male, Han ethnic group, born in December 1933, a native of Changshan County, Zhejiang Province. A master singer of Changshan Hecai ballads. He has sung and transmitted Hecai ballads for more than seventy years and has a thorough command of the art of Changshan Hecai ballads. He has more than thirty apprentices in Changshan, and more than three hundred school students have taken part in his training. He took part in the publication of a number of related works, including Changshan Hecai Ballads, A Collection of Changshan Folk Customs, Folk Hecai Ballads for Raising the Ridge Beam, Hecai Ballads Passed Down from Generation to Generation and The Hecai Master. Within the documented technical tradition of Changshan Hecai Ballads in Changshan, Zhejiang: The Changshan hecai ballads are lively and festive folk ballads current in Changshan county of Quzhou city, Zhejiang, and performed at weddings, beam-raisings, birthday congratulations, spring planting, autumn harvest and shop openings. They are relatively well preserved and complete, their performance rites are very particular, and their influence in the people's daily life is relatively great. They may be divided into five kinds: first, beam-raising hecai, a sacrificial hecai rite of praying for blessing and driving out evil held when the roof beam is installed before a new house is completed; second, wedding hecai, performed in such rites as meeting the bride, the wedding ceremony of bowing, drinking the crossed-cups wine and teasing the bridal chamber; third, birthday or longevity hecai, at decade birthdays or birthday congratulations; fourth, funeral hecai, performed at funerals to bless the departed in reaching the Western Paradise and enjoying bliss in the immortal hall, and also to pray for the protection and peace of the descendants; and fifth, other hecai ballads connected with production and life. The Changshan hecai ballads have the following features: first, a marked literary character—the last characters of the front and back lines are basically rhymed, and the lines have the same number of characters, neat phrasing, a strong sense of rhythm and are pleasant to read aloud. Second, strong interaction—when the hecai singer sings, the audience responds, making the atmosphere warm. Fourth, attention to ethics. The Changshan hecai ballads have a long history and circulate widely. Their content is varied and they have striking artistic features and local cultural characteristics. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Beam-Raising Hecai": The sacrificial hecai rite of praying for blessing and driving out evil held when the roof beam is installed before a new house is completed. "Wedding Hecai (Meeting the Bride and Teasing the Bridal Chamber)": The hecai ballads performed in such rites as meeting the bride, the wedding ceremony of bowing, drinking the crossed-cups wine and teasing the bridal chamber. "Birthday and Longevity Hecai": The hecai at decade birthdays or birthday congratulations. "The Hecai Lyrics (More Than a Thousand Pieces, Over 200,000 Characters)": The extant hecai lyric texts, refined by men of letters and sung orally by the people.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

A national representative bearer of Changshan Hecai Ballads, a fifth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. In recent years he has worked actively to transmit Changshan Hecai ballads, appearing in numerous public-interest cultural performances and conducting training in a variety of forms; he has established teaching bases for the transmission of Changshan Hecai ballads at Changshan County Experimental Primary School and Changshan No. 1 Primary School.

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. Cengxiangtai · National Representative Bearer Archive