Li Hongxiang

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Li Hongxiang, Female, Han, from Sihong, Jiangsu, is a fifth-batch national representative bearer of Si Opera (Ⅳ-62). The tradition is documented in Sihong, Jiangsu. Within the regional tradition and school record of Si Opera in Sihong, Jiangsu: In the late Qing Sizhou opera was distributed mainly across twenty townships in Sihong, including Shangtang, Weiying, Fengshan, Guiren, Zhuhu and Meihua. The genre's plain and warm style is much loved by the local people. Sizhou opera is found in northern Jiangsu, northern Anhui, eastern Henan and southern Shandong; the Jiangsu line centres on Sihong and shares an origin and interpenetrates with Anhui Sizhou opera and Liuqin opera, the townships of Shangtang, Weiying and Fengshan in Sihong once being areas dense with troupes. Sizhou opera was originally called lahun qiang; it originated at Shangtang town in Sihong county, Jiangsu, and through folk artists' recording and collation gradually formed the fixed tunes of lahun qiang, with a history of more than two hundred years. Before 1949 the locality alone had thirty-eight family troupes. In 1952 it was named “Sizhou opera” and in 1953, with the approval of the Sihong county government, the Sihong County Sizhou Opera Troupe was formally founded. Drawing on the Jiangsu volume of the Annals of Chinese Xiqu, Sizhou opera grew out of lahun qiang and was named in 1952, the Sihong troupe being founded in 1953 with county approval; in 2006 Sizhou opera was inscribed in the first batch of the national intangible cultural heritage list.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

A woman of Han ethnicity, she was born in February 1960 in Sihong County, Jiangsu Province. She is a National First-Class Actor. She studied Sizhou opera under Xiao Changyu and Zang Qingluan. After graduating from senior high school in 1977 she joined the Sihong County Sizhou Opera Troupe, where she studied and performed Sizhou opera. For more than forty years she has worked continuously on the staging and performance of Sizhou opera, rehearsing numerous full-length plays and highlight scenes and giving nearly a thousand performances. Within the documented technical tradition of Si Opera in Sihong, Jiangsu: Sizhou opera has a strong local character, its singing plaintive and gorgeous, fine and pleasing. The female voice especially, at the end of each passage, soars an octave upward with a small-voice flourish, and the male voice adds filler words to the trailing tune, with a soul-stirring charm. Its features are: half-singing, half-speaking; its recitation, singing and performing style are closely bound up with the local spoken language and customs, and its accompaniment is based mainly on the native pipa, erhu and bamboo flute. It is accompanied by the native pipa, erhu and bamboo flute, and on the basis of lahun qiang its singing has developed various ban patterns, the female voice marked by an octave-soaring flourish at the close and the male voice by a trailing tune with filler words, its recitation close to northern Jiangsu speech and rich in narrative-song flavour. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Shi Mianhua (Picking Cotton)": One of the traditional short plays of Sizhou opera (lahun qiang), noted for its song-and-dance and life-like performance. "Da Gan Bang (Beating the Dry Rod)": One of the traditional short plays of lahun qiang, its singing rich in narrative-song flavour and long circulating among the people of northern Jiangsu and northern Anhui. "Wang Sanjie Pao Caiqiu (Wang Sanjie Throws the Brocade Ball)": One of the traditional plays of lahun qiang, often performed on folk wedding occasions.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

She is a representative bearer of Sizhou opera, a fifth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. In recent years she has been chiefly responsible for collecting and collating traditional Sizhou opera scripts and production photographs, and for organizing the protection and transmission of the genre. She has trained more than twenty Sizhou opera actors and takes part year-round in activities bringing intangible cultural heritage into schools, carrying out a great deal of foundational work for the development of Sizhou opera.

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. Li Hongxiang · National Representative Bearer Archive