Xu Chunhua
Lineage & School of Heritage
In 1960 she joined the Nanjing Baiju Troupe, studying under the baiju artists Ji Xinshan and Nie Shaoting.
Mastery, Signature Works & Repertoire
Born in June 1942 in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, she is of Han ethnicity. When the troupe disbanded in 1970 she continued to study under artists such as Zuo Bangyun, Liang Hanchen and Wu Hongxiang, persisting in collecting and collating traditional baiju repertoire and preserving and mastering a large number of traditional baiju qupai tunes and vocal passages. Her timbre is resonant and her phrasing supple; her performance is finely detailed, and she excels at creating characters. She fully inherited the traditional vocal techniques of Nanjing baiju, in which sung and spoken passages are combined and diction is matched to melodic movement, and on the basis of the traditional style she created new qupai such as the Improved Jianjian Hua (Gailiang Jianjian Hua), the New Chuanxin Diao (Xin Chuanxin Diao) and the Allegro Manjiang Hong (Kuaiban Manjiang Hong). From 2003 to the present she has opened baiju hobby classes and free public lectures in kindergartens, primary and secondary schools and universities across Nanjing, and has established baiju transmission bases. Her representative pieces include Four Stanzas of Mochou (Mochou Si Nong), Lament of the Opium Smoker (Yapian Yan Zitan) and Names of the Ancients (Guren Ming).
Honors & Recognition
She is a national representative bearer of Nanjing Baiju, a fifth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. From 1985 to 2003 she organized former members of the baiju troupe to revive baiju transmission work, laying the foundation for the transmission and safeguarding of the genre. Her works won third prize in the national selection of outstanding quyi programmes for the "Chinese Dream" held by the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles.
References & Archival Sources
Representative Items of This Bearer
- Nanjing Baiju Ⅴ-81
Profile
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, organized by topic and translated into English. 阅读中文版。