Sun Huayang

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Sun Huayang, Male, Han, from Zoucheng, Shandong, is a sixth-batch national representative bearer of Suona Art (Ⅱ-37). The tradition is documented in Zoucheng, Shandong. Within the regional tradition and school record of Suona Art in Zoucheng, Shandong: These troupes spread the Ping school drum-and-wind to every place, enlarging its influence and gradually making it a drum-and-wind school of distinctive character. Suona is a transliteration of the Arabic “surna” (zurna), called in antiquity “suoliao” or “su'ernai”, and widely current in many countries of Asia, Africa and Europe; it came into China at the latest in the Jin and Yuan periods. In addition, the small suona used in the performance of Fujian nanqu is called the “aizi” or “nan'ai”; the suona used to accompany Puxian opera is called the “meihua” or “chuibian”, and a larger kind is called the “dalong” or “dahaidi”; the all-wood suona of the Uyghur is called the “su'ernai”; and the Tibetan, Miao, Mongol and Korean peoples each have suona of different form. The Ping school drum-and-wind is a kind of folk drum-and-wind music current in the area of Zoucheng, Shandong, and took shape about the last years of the Jiaqing reign of the Qing. By the early years of the Republic several dozen drum-and-wind troupes, such as the Sun family troupe, the Zhang family troupe, the Ding family troupe and the Zhou family troupe, were active in southern Shandong and its surrounding areas. The representative pieces of the Ping school drum-and-wind are rich and varied, the chief ones being Lament for the Great Wall, Lament at the Fifth Watch, Gathering the Worthy Guests, Ten Kinds of Scenery, Five Six Five, Audience with the Son of Heaven, Liu Qing Niang, Burning the Grape Trellis and Birds and Beasts Make Merry in Spring. The Ping school drum-and-wind comes from the people and serves the people, is closely bound up with the life and customs of the broad masses and has a certain reference value for the study of the history of the development and evolution of folk custom in Zoucheng, Shandong.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

The bearer record for Sun Huayang is anchored in the documented technical standards of Suona Art in Zoucheng, Shandong. Within the documented technical tradition of Suona Art in Zoucheng, Shandong: In Chinese folk usage it also has the names of bronze flute, tin flute, pear blossom and sea flute. The suona is made up of the reed, the staple, the air disc, the body and the bronze bell; its finger-holes are arranged in order according to the heptatonic scale, the distances between them being basically equal, it can turn through seven modes, and its range is generally two octaves and a major second. It has such blowing techniques as portamento, tonguing, arched-breath tone, top-breath tone, the rolling “du-lu” and circular breathing (blowing without a break for a long time), and is a solo instrument of very strong expressiveness. Its volume is great and its tone high and ringing, making it one of the indispensable instruments of the wind-and-percussion band; in antiquity, besides playing military music, it was used for the drum-and-wind music of the yamen and as accompaniment to opera, song and dance, and in the daily life of the people it is mostly used for festivals, weddings and funerals and theatrical scenes. The instruments of the Ping school drum-and-wind are chiefly the suona, flute, sheng, guanzi, drum, gong, nao and cymbals, wooden fish, bangzi, gaohu, erhu, sanxian and pipa; its characteristic instrument, the bronze-bodied suona, is made of sheet bronze, with a body about twenty-five centimetres long, a bronze bell about six centimetres in diameter and a tube at the lower end of the body about two centimetres in diameter, and its reed is mostly made from the unopened reed-plume of autumn reeds; its tone is loud and crisp, clanging like metal, and extremely penetrating. The range of the bronze-bodied suona covers two octaves and it can play the level tune, elegant tune, Yue tune, five-character tune and fan tune. Besides the commonly used tonguing, portamento, flowered tongue, finger flowers, vibrato and the techniques of swallowing, spitting, cushioning, striking, wiping and pressing, there are also tongue-thrust tone, arched-breath tone, rebound tone, reversed double tonguing, linked plucking tone, breath-and-lip vibrato, finger-and-breath vibrato, three-string tone, xiao tone and circular breathing, and sometimes magic and acrobatics are blended in. The style of the Ping school drum-and-wind is calm, gentle, sweet and fine, giving the impression that “it is as level as clouds and flowing water and as steady as the green pine of Mount Tai”, showing the wondrous within the level and change within the steady, tempering hardness with softness; it is deeply loved by the people. At present the old artists of the Ping school drum-and-wind are growing advanced in years, some of the ancient instruments formerly used have gradually been replaced by modern ones, and the traditional performing technique and named tunes are steadily dying out, so that the government urgently needs to take effective measures for rescue and protection. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Lament for the Great Wall": Chief pieces of the Ping school drum-and-wind include Lament for the Great Wall, Lament at the Fifth Watch, Gathering the Worthy Guests, Ten Kinds of Scenery, Five Six Five, Audience with the Son of Heaven, Liu Qing Niang, Burning the Grape Trellis and Birds and Beasts Make Merry in Spring. "Lament at the Fifth Watch": The representative pieces of the Zoucheng Ping school drum-and-wind are rich and varied, the chief ones being Lament for the Great Wall, Lament at the Fifth Watch, Gathering the Worthy Guests, Ten Kinds of Scenery, Five Six Five, Audience with the Son of Heaven, Liu Qing Niang, Burning the Grape Trellis and Birds and Beasts Make Merry in Spring. "Gathering the Worthy Guests": The representative pieces of the Zoucheng Ping school drum-and-wind are rich and varied, the chief ones being Lament for the Great Wall, Lament at the Fifth Watch, Gathering the Worthy Guests, Ten Kinds of Scenery, Five Six Five, Audience with the Son of Heaven, Liu Qing Niang, Burning the Grape Trellis and Birds and Beasts Make Merry in Spring. "Ten Kinds of Scenery": A chief piece of the Ping school drum-and-wind current in the Zoucheng area of Shandong.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

In 2025, Sun Huayang was announced in the sixth batch of national representative bearers for Suona Art, with Zoucheng, Shandong as the declared area. Within the documented safeguarding record of Suona Art in Zoucheng, Shandong: The project was inscribed in the national inventory in 2008 (batch 2), with Zoucheng, Shandong as its declared area, and Zoucheng Culture Tourism Gong Gong Service Center (Zoucheng Library, Zoucheng 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. Sunhuayang (Zoucheng, Shandong) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. Sunhuayang · China ICH Official Archive