Wang Zufang

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Wang Zufang, Female, Wa, from Tengchong, Yunnan, is a fifth-batch national representative bearer of Wa Qing Opera (Ⅳ-135). The tradition is documented in Tengchong, Yunnan. Within the regional tradition and school record of Wa Qing Opera in Tengchong, Yunnan: Wa Qing opera centres on Ganzhe village, Hehua town, Tengchong county, Yunnan, and circulates in Tengchong and in the mixed Wa and Han villages west of the Nujiang; because passing merchants, soldiers and civilians brought Hubei Qing opera in and it spread and evolved among the Wa people, it is a typical case of Han opera being localised in a frontier ethnic area. Before the Xianfeng reign of the Qing, passing merchants, soldiers and civilians brought Hubei Qing opera to Ganzhe village, Tengchong county, Yunnan, a key point on the ancient silk road, where it spread among the Wa people of Ganzhe village and gradually evolved into Wa Qing opera.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Female, Wa ethnicity, born in April 1969 in Tengchong County, Yunnan Province. She has a comprehensive command of the vocal system of Qing Opera, the nine tunes and thirteen rhythmic patterns, and can sing several dozen traditional scenes with considerable fluency, including Jiang Gu Provokes Her Sister-in-Law (Jiang Gu Diao Sao), Driving Out the Pang Woman (Zhu Gan Pang Shi), The Meeting in the Reed Grove (Lu Lin Hui) and An'an Delivers Rice (An An Song Mi). She has added new movements to the performance, her technique is skilled, and her singing is modulated and pleasing to the ear. Within the documented technical tradition of Wa Qing Opera in Tengchong, Yunnan: In the late Ming and early Qing the people of Hubei created Qing opera, a new dramatic form, on the basis of the ancient Qingyang qiang. Wa Qing opera's vocal music comprises the “nine arias and thirteen bans”, tunes that rise and fall, pleasing to the ear, good both at narrative and at lyric, preserving the primitive and archaic features of early Qing opera and possessing fairly strong artistic expressiveness and appeal. Wa Qing opera's language is beautiful, its plots vivid and its characters sharply drawn; the regularly performed plays handed down include more than a dozen excerpts such as Jiang Gu Teases Her Sister-in-law, Driving Out Madam Pang, Meeting in the Reed Grove and An'an Delivers the Rice, all drawn from the Han folk stories The Record of Three Filial Piety and The White Crane Legend. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Jiang Gu Teases Her Sister-in-law": One of the plays commonly staged by Wa Qing opera, drawn from the Han folk story The Record of Three Filial Piety. "Driving Out Madam Pang": One of the plays commonly staged by Wa Qing opera, drawn from the Han folk story The Record of Three Filial Piety. "Meeting in the Reed Grove": One of the plays commonly staged by Wa Qing opera. "An'an Delivers the Rice": One of the plays commonly staged by Wa Qing opera, drawn from the Han folk story The Record of Three Filial Piety.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

She is a representative bearer of Wa Qing Opera, a fifth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. She was born in Ganzhe Village, Hehua Township, a place where Wa Qing Opera is transmitted, and from childhood learned to sing it from the elders of her village, later studying under Li Jiaxian, a national-level bearer of Wa Qing Opera. Thoroughly familiar with the vocal music and plots of Wa Qing Opera, she is dedicated to training a younger generation of bearers for the genre.

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. Wang Zufang · National Representative Bearer Archive