Song Baoyuan

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Song Baoyuan, Male, Han, from Datonghuizutuzuzizhi, Qinghai, is a sixth-batch national representative bearer of Hua'er (Ⅱ-20). The tradition is documented in Datonghuizutuzuzizhi, Qinghai. Within the regional tradition and school record of Hua'er in Datonghuizutuzuzizhi, Qinghai: Hua'er is a mountain-song kind widely current among the eight ethnic groups—Hui, Han, Tu, Dongxiang, Bao'an, Salar, Tibetan and Yugur—of the four provinces and regions of Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia and Xinjiang. It is always sung in the local Chinese dialect and may be sung only outside the villages and stockades; it is commonly called a “wild song” (as opposed to the “home song”, that is, the banquet song) and is also known as the “youth”. This is the marked feature by which the Laoyeshan “hua'er” and “flower fair” differ from other folk songs and song fairs. The Laoyeshan flower fair is a large folk-song singing event held on the sixth day of the sixth lunar month each year on Laoye mountain in the Datong Hui and Tu autonomous county of Qinghai. It arose in the Ming dynasty and, over several centuries of development, and in company with the activity of “paying court to the mountain and roaming the fair”, gradually evolved from a mainly god-entertaining affair into a large folk seasonal festival mainly for the entertainment of people.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

The bearer record for Song Baoyuan is anchored in the documented technical standards of Hua'er in Datonghuizutuzuzizhi, Qinghai. Within the documented technical tradition of Hua'er in Datonghuizutuzuzizhi, Qinghai: It is sung on two main kinds of occasion: daily production and life, and the “flower fair”. The “flower fair” is a large folk song gathering, also called “singing the mountain”. The Laoyeshan flower fair has two forms of singing. The first is the spontaneous singing of the masses, who on the “sixth of the sixth” in the dense woods and flowering thickets of Laoye mountain sing freely in groups of scores or hundreds, feeling and scene merging into one. The second is the organized singing that arose after 1949, with fixed places and stages, where singers chosen through round after round of selection compete in song on the stage. The Laoyeshan flower fair is chiefly a singing of the “Hehuang hua'er”. The singers are men and women of the Han, Hui, Tu, Tibetan and other nationalities, who all sing the hua'er in Chinese. The content of the Laoyeshan hua'er is mainly the singing of love and courtship life but also touches religion, folk custom, production labour, historical story and new persons and new affairs. Its lyrics are mostly in the four-line form of alternating seven-character lines (the first and third) and eight-character lines (the second and fourth), with the special rule that the second and fourth lines must end in a “double-character” word and that the first and third lines and the second and fourth lines rhyme separately, forming a special lyric metre that is also an exception among the Han folk songs of the whole country. The language of the Hehuang hua'er is vivid, vivid in image, beautiful and sprightly, making much use of the rhetorical devices of exposition, comparison and association, and possesses extremely high literary value. Representative pieces of the Datong Laoyeshan hua'er include The Datong Tune, The Dongxia Tune and The Laoyeshan Tune. These tunes are distinctive in rhythm, beautiful and lyrical, high and ringing, sweet and drawn out, and are deeply loved by the people of every nationality in Datong. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "The Datong Tune": The Datong Laoyeshan hua'er has such representative pieces as The Datong Tune, The Dongxia Tune and The Laoyeshan Tune. "The Dongxia Tune": A representative tune of the Datong Laoyeshan hua'er, distinctive in rhythm and sweet and drawn out. "The Laoyeshan Tune": A representative tune of the Laoyeshan flower fair, sung by the Han, Hui, Tu and Tibetan singers of Datong.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

In 2025, Song Baoyuan was announced in the sixth batch of national representative bearers for Hua'er, with Datonghuizutuzuzizhi, Qinghai as the declared area. Within the documented safeguarding record of Hua'er in Datonghuizutuzuzizhi, Qinghai: The project was inscribed in the national inventory in 2006 (batch 1), with Datonghuizutuzuzizhi, Qinghai as its declared area, and Datong Hui Tu Autonomous County Cultural Center as its safeguarding unit. Since the project was inscribed in the national inventory, its declared area and safeguarding unit have carried out documentation, transmission and presentation within the national safeguarding framework. Together, the inventory record and the project archive form the public documentary basis for the bearer’s transmission practice.

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. Songbaoyuan (Datonghuizutuzuzizhi, Qinghai) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. Songbaoyuan · China ICH Official Archive