Zhang Yuzhen

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Zhang Yuzhen, Female, Han, from Jinhu, Jiangsu, is a sixth-batch national representative bearer of Weeding Gong and Drum (Ⅱ-27). The tradition is documented in Jinhu, Jiangsu. Within the regional tradition and school record of Weeding Gong and Drum in Jinhu, Jiangsu: The Jinhu rice-transplanting song belongs to the category of work chanteys, but differs from ordinary chanteys in that its music is not strongly rhythmic, its phrase structures are mostly asymmetrical, its rhythm is drawn out and its lyrical character is marked. Its language is the Jianghuai dialect, with many padding words and padding tunes, and its content covers every aspect of rural life in the Jinhu area over the past hundred years. The Jinhu rice-transplanting song is a field song sung at rice-transplanting labour in Jinhu county, Jiangsu, and its surrounding areas, and is connected in origin with the ancient “incense-fire play”.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

The bearer record for Zhang Yuzhen is anchored in the documented technical standards of Weeding Gong and Drum in Jinhu, Jiangsu. Within the documented technical tradition of Weeding Gong and Drum in Jinhu, Jiangsu: The Jinhu rice-transplanting song is a field song sung at rice-transplanting labour in Jinhu county, Jiangsu, and its surrounding areas, and is one of the weeding gong-and-drum folk-song forms. Jinhu county lies in the Lixiahe region of northern Jiangsu, with broad waters and a dense network of rivers, and its crops are mainly rice and wheat. Its farming culture provided a good foundation for the birth and development of the Jinhu rice-transplanting song. The song has a history of more than a hundred years and is connected in origin with the ancient “incense-fire play”: part of its forms of singing, line formats, percussion instruments and singing content are basically the same as those of the incense-fire play. Its tunes are chiefly the “four-line head”, the “five-and-a-half lines”, the “string of tens” and the “snatched eight lines”. It is divided into the three forms of singing: the “rice chantey”, the “gong-and-drum rice-transplanting song” and the “drum-sung singing”. The “rice chanteys” are mostly improvised short songs, representative pieces being The Eagle Has Come, Seven Eight Fifteen Generations, The Sixth-Month Lotus Joined to a Lotus Root, Making Embroidered Shoes and The Yellow Flower. The “gong-and-drum rice-transplanting song” is a long narrative song sung by professional gong-and-drum masters, one striking the gong and one beating the drum and taking the lead in singing. The most striking is the “drum-sung singing”, in which one or more sing the Ge Dong Dai, commonly called “drumming”, and one takes up the singing, called “singing”. Its tune style is distinctive, its lyrics rich in content and its melody mild and smooth. It has the pentatonic shang and yu modes, fresh and pleasing to the ear. It uses the pentatonic scale, with the shang and yu modes alternating; the melody is mainly stepwise with little undulation, moving downward in direction, the tune mild and smooth. It is ornamented with descending and ascending glides, mordents and front appoggiaturas, with highly colouristic altered tones. Its use of the modal alternation techniques of treating the leading note as the mediant, the sharpened fourth as the tonic and the raised fourth as the mediant, forming an alternating mode of shifting mode and tonality, is the most striking feature of the Jinhu rice-transplanting song. The Jinhu rice-transplanting song has both short song chanteys of one tune to one set of words, and the long narrative “gong-and-drum rice-transplanting song”, and the “drum-sung singing” of one tune to many sets of words. Its forms of singing are mostly one-singing-and-the-many-responding and the one-singing-one-responding antiphonal form, and there is also the interspersed form of “intervening speech”. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "The Eagle Has Come": One of the representative pieces of the Jinhu rice-transplanting song. "Seven Eight Fifteen Generations": One of the representative pieces of the Jinhu rice-transplanting song. "The Sixth-Month Lotus Joined to a Lotus Root": One of the representative pieces of the Jinhu rice-transplanting song. "Making Embroidered Shoes": One of the representative pieces of the Jinhu rice-transplanting song.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

In 2025, Zhang Yuzhen was announced in the sixth batch of national representative bearers for Weeding Gong and Drum, with Jinhu, Jiangsu as the declared area. Within the documented safeguarding record of Weeding Gong and Drum in Jinhu, Jiangsu: The project was inscribed in the national inventory in 2014 (batch 4), with Jinhu, Jiangsu as its declared area, and Jinhu 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. Zhangyuzhen (Jinhu, Jiangsu) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. Zhangyuzhen · China ICH Official Archive