He Hanpei

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Both his grandfather and his father were organizers of Shifan teams. From childhood he practised Shifan under the guidance of his elders and became thoroughly versed in the playing techniques of the various Shifan instruments. Within the regional tradition and school record of Shifan Music in Foshan, Guangdong: Foshan shifan is a form of folk instrumental performance with marked local characteristics, distributed within a radius of five or six kilometres around Foshan Town in Nanhai District, Foshan City, Guangdong Province, with a history of six or seven hundred years. According to what old artists have passed down orally, Foshan shifan was brought to the area from Anhui and the Jiangsu-Zhejiang region about two hundred years ago. Foshan shifan is distributed within a radius of five or six kilometres around Foshan Town in Nanhai District, Foshan City, Guangdong Province, with a history of six or seven hundred years; according to what old artists have passed down orally, it was brought to the area from Anhui and the Jiangsu-Zhejiang region about two hundred years ago. At present there are two complete sets of tune patterns with full recording and score documentation: one is Gua Pai, Chang Luo and Sui Jin from the Mingxing Yingying group, the other is the set from Chaji Village. Halls such as the He Guang Yi Tang shifan association form the basic organisation, each with successors of its own, and they have broken with the old rule that shifan techniques were transmitted only to men and never to women. In the 1930s, because of the destruction caused by war, all the shifan associations in Foshan stopped their activities.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Male, Han ethnicity, born in November 1947 in Foshan, Guangdong Province. In 1962 he joined the He Guangyi Tang Shifan Society and began performing Shifan. For many years he served as chief Shifan instructor of He Guangyi Tang, and from 2002 he began organizing the collection and collation of materials on the technique, the qupai (tune titles) and the society's activities, including photographs. So that new members could gain an intuitive grasp of Shifan qupai, he worked with scholars and specialists to develop a "sound-imitation learning method", which teaches qupai that had previously been transmitted only by oral instruction and example through written phonetic notation. To prevent Shifan from being lost, he took the lead in breaking with the past tradition that Shifan technique was passed only to men and not to women, and he organized a performing troupe of nearly sixty members. Within the documented technical tradition of Shifan Music in Foshan, Guangdong: Shifan music is also called "ten classes" or "five pairs", taking its name from the ten instruments played, which are made of silk, bamboo, leather, wood and metal. This music is light and lively, strongly rhythmic, harmonious in pitch and pleasing to the ear, and it is widely circulated in Fujian, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other parts of China. Most shifan melodies come from folk minor tunes and huapa (suona pieces); they have also drawn much nourishment from opera, quyi storytelling and song tunes. Their performing forms are divided into seated performance, marching performance and dancing performance, and the player in charge of the clapper boards normally acts as the conductor. Of the two original forms, the "plain shifan" accompanied by gong and drums and the "mixed shifan" combining sizhu music with gong and drums, only the plain shifan survives today; it is closely related to the shifan luogu of southern Jiangsu. Yuan and Nan dynasty tune patterns are preserved among the Foshan shifan; in the course of transmission they became closely bound up with folk activities, absorbing flying-cymbal performance and the instruments commonly used by local bayin gong and drums, and took shape as a form of folk instrumental music with strong local colour. The greatest feature of Foshan shifan is that the light small cymbals are not struck in the conventional way: the performer holds one cymbal by its boss while swinging the other, to which a cord has been tied, so that it grazes and strikes it; ten or eight people at once perform a variety of patterns, presenting strong dance appeal and visual pleasure, hence the name "flying cymbals". This kind of flying-cymbal performance is now unique in China. As celebratory gong-and-drum music, Foshan shifan is played mainly at folk festivals such as the Dragon Boat Festival, the Seventh Night Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival, and at activities such as deity birthdays and the "Autumn Colours" procession (also called "Autumn Scenery"). At present there are two complete sets of Foshan shifan tune patterns with full recording and score documentation: one set is Gua Pai, Chang Luo and Sui Jin from the Mingxing Yingying group, and the other is the set from Chaji Village, comprising Shua Jin Qian, He Gu Yin, Tao Gu Qi and Chang Luo. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, some local shifan organisations were restored. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Gua Pai": One of the tune patterns in the Mingxing Yingying set of Foshan shifan, with complete recording and score documentation. "Chang Luo": One of the tune patterns in the Mingxing Yingying set of Foshan shifan, with complete recording and score documentation. "Sui Jin": One of the tune patterns in the Mingxing Yingying set of Foshan shifan, with complete recording and score documentation.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

Representative bearer of Shifan Music (Foshan Shifan), a fifth-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. He Hanpei · National Representative Bearer Archive