Puwenxue
01 · Lineage & Regional School
Puwenxue, Male, Yi, from Dayao, Yunnan, is a fifth-batch national representative bearer of Yi Opera (Ⅳ-136). The tradition is documented in Dayao, Yunnan. Within the regional tradition and school record of Yi Opera in Dayao, Yunnan: Yi opera has a sharply contemporary character, distinctive local features and a rich ethnic style; the props used in performance are all the everyday working tools of the local Yi people, while its costume and headdress are carefully hand-made by Yi women. Drawing on the Yunnan volume of the Annals of Chinese Xiqu and local Chuxiong materials, Yi opera gradually formed in the traditional festivals and folk activities of the Yi people and was formally named after being collated and refined by literary and art workers in the 1950s; fusing Yi folk literature, music, dance and painting and performed in the Yi language and Yi vocal style, it is the ethnic drama peculiar to the Chuxiong Yi autonomous prefecture.
02 · Mastery & Signature Works
Male, Yi ethnicity, born in January 1970 in Dayao County, Yunnan Province. From childhood he learned Yi song and dance performance and the playing of ethnic instruments from his father Pu Guodong, and by his early teens could sing and play with skill; later, under the guidance of the veteran Yiju artist Yang Sen, he studied Yiju performance technique systematically, acquired a comprehensive command of Yiju acting and vocal passages, and became a leading performer and organizer of Yiju. The Yi short plays he writes, directs and performs himself have beautiful, appealing melodies and are much favoured by local audiences. He actively promotes the transmission and development of the art of Yiju. Within the documented technical tradition of Yi Opera in Dayao, Yunnan: Yi opera is a local ethnic drama peculiar to the Chuxiong Yi and is widely found in the Chuxiong Yi autonomous prefecture of Yunnan. It formed and developed in the Yi's traditional festivals and folk activities, fusing the essence of such traditional arts as Yi folk literature, music, dance and painting. It attaches great importance to using music to set off and heighten stage atmosphere, further expressing content through ethnic music rich in rustic flavour around different tunes and arias. It performs in spoken Yi and attends to highlighting the Yi's habitual use of metaphor in dialogue, implicitly expressing characters' psychological activity; in on-stage dialogue it uses Han speech with Yi accent, especially bringing out the humour of Yi vernacular. Its performance combines the Yi people's gift for song and dance, making great use of such everyday Yi steps as the “three-bend”, “mountain-climbing”, “jumping” and “dancing circle”, so that the movements become dance-like, both enriching the genre's own artistic vocabulary and distinguishing it from other operatic performance forms. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "The Midnight Bleat of Sheep": One of the Yi opera plays in which an inheritor appeared. "Manmo and Maruo": One of the Yi opera plays in which an inheritor appeared. "The Meige Tune, the Mountain-Crossing Tune, the Guest-Welcoming Tune": Yi folk songs and instrumental pieces commonly used in Yi opera; the inheritors can skilfully sing several dozen such works in the Yi language. "The Young Village Head": A short Yi opera written, directed and performed by an inheritor, winning first prize for performance.
The Midnight Bleat of Sheep
One of the Yi opera plays in which an inheritor appeared.
Manmo and Maruo
One of the Yi opera plays in which an inheritor appeared.
The Meige Tune, the Mountain-Crossing Tune, the Guest-Welcoming Tune
Yi folk songs and instrumental pieces commonly used in Yi opera; the inheritors can skilfully sing several dozen such works in the Yi language.
The Young Village Head
A short Yi opera written, directed and performed by an inheritor, winning first prize for performance.
03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status
He is a representative bearer of Yiju, a fifth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. He has taken part in many theatrical festivals, playing the village head in the short Yiju plays The Young Village Head (Huo Zi Cun Zhang) and The Baicao Ridge Ensemble (Bai Cao Ling Zu He), winning first prize for performance and a performance award respectively. Meige by the Fire Pit (Huo Tang Bian De Mei Ge), in which he performed, won the silver award of the Yunnan Provincial Caiyun Award for mass culture. In 2009 he was named a top rural practical talent of Dayao County by the Organization Department of the Dayao County Committee.
04 · Associated Heritage Item Dossier
Historical origin
Drawing on the Yunnan volume of the Annals of Chinese Xiqu and local Chuxiong materials, Yi opera gradually formed in the traditional festivals and folk activities of the Yi people and was formally named after being collated and refined by literary and art workers in the 1950s; fusing Yi folk literature, music, dance and painting and performed in the Yi language and Yi vocal style, it is the ethnic drama peculiar to the Chuxiong Yi autonomous prefecture.
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.
| Bearer | Declared area | Roster code | Relation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Li Maorong | Dayao, Yunnan | 03-1149 | Same declared area |
| Puwenxue | Dayao, Yunnan | 05-2464 | This page |
06 · Archival Sources & Bibliography
This static English edition is rendered at the edge for search engines, AI crawlers and readers without JavaScript. Compiled from official national representative bearer archival records and the associated project dossier, organized by topic and translated into English. 阅读中文版。