Baizhalizeng

01 · Lineage & Regional School

From the age of sixteen he studied under Taoketao, systematically learning the singing techniques and repertoire of hurin wuligeer, and mastered traditional pieces on Mongolian historical themes such as Baoyin Nomohu Qinwang (Prince Baoyin Nomohu) and Cheng Feng Huang Fei (The Consort Who Rode the Phoenix). Within the regional tradition and school record of Wuligeer in Tongliao, Inner Mongolia: The Yabugan Uliger of Tongliao has the Horqin grasslands as its hinterland, and the performers narrate and sing with the mouth alone, without any instrument; in the narration and singing the lyrical and the narrative carry equal weight. Compared with the Huren Uliger of Zhaluote Banner, Horqin Right Wing Middle Banner and other places, it relies more heavily on the foundation of the rhymed recitation of "Taoli" (the ancient Mongolian heroic epic) and of Huolaibao, and the short stories and ancient legends transmitted among the folk can also be admitted into the repertoire. The performer Bai Zhali Zeng of Naiman Banner indeed formed a personal style by absorbing the characteristics of Taoli and Huolaibao. "Uliger" is a Mongolian word meaning "Mongolian-language storytelling". It took shape in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties and has a history of more than 300 years to date, and it has circulated widely all along among the Mongolian population of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and of the three northeastern provinces to the east.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Male, Mongol ethnicity, born in November 1950 in Naiman Banner, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. He lays stress on absorbing features of such narrative arts as taoli (the ancient Mongolian heroic epic) and holboo, and in this way has formed a personal singing style. Over the years he has recorded more than a thousand hours of wuligeer programmes at radio stations in various places. He has taught at folk art training classes in Tongliao, Chifeng and elsewhere, and has been engaged as a visiting professor by Inner Mongolia Normal University, Inner Mongolia University and other institutions of higher learning. He attaches importance to collecting and collating relevant materials and has so far collated more than one hundred performance scripts. Within the documented technical tradition of Wuligeer in Tongliao, Inner Mongolia: The Yabugan Uliger of the Tongliao area of Inner Mongolia is a branch of Uliger that has long circulated among the Mongolian people of the Horqin grasslands. Yabugan Uliger has three forms of expression: first, a prose style based mainly on narration; second, a rhymed style based mainly on singing; third, a style combining narration and singing. Its content is very wide-ranging: the short stories transmitted orally among the folk, the ancient legendary tales "Taoli" (folk epics), and the unaccompanied folk declamation and bare-song forms of narration are all included in it. In the course of narrating and singing, the performers give equal weight to the lyrical and the narrative, combining prose with poetry and speech with narration, and fully express the love of the Mongolian people of the Horqin grasslands for a happy life and their longing for a beautiful future. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Yabugan uliger": A Tongliao branch of the Mongolian tale-telling, long current among Khorchin herders and performed without instruments. "Epic and praise-song sources": Performers draw on the old heroic epic and on praise-song rhyming to shape personal styles. "A thousand hours on tape": Bai Zhalizeng recorded over a thousand hours of tale-telling for regional radio stations and edited a hundred libretti. "Collecting the libretti": Once purely oral, the branch now survives partly through the hundred-odd libretti he collected.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

He is a national representative bearer of wuligeer, a fifth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. He began training successors in 1982, and his disciples are now all able to perform independently.

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. Baizhalizeng · National Representative Bearer Archive