Li Baoqin

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Li Baoqin learned the art from her parents from childhood. In 1951 she joined the Bengbu Sizhou Opera Theatre; in 1969 she was sent down to the Caogou Commune in Si County, Anhui Province; in 1972 she joined the Sizhou Opera Troupe of the Suxian Prefecture, Anhui Province; and in 1974 she was transferred back to the Bengbu Sizhou Opera Theatre. Within the regional tradition and school record of Si Opera in Bengbu, Anhui: Accounts of the origins of Sizhou opera differ. Many hold that it arose in the Haizhou area of northern Jiangsu, where local farmers originally improvised small plays to folk tunes such as the hunter tunes (liehuqiang) and Taiping songs; it was later carried into Sizhou, where it absorbed the local folk singing art and became the Anhui la hun qiang Sizhou opera. Sizhou opera is closely bound to the life and customs of the people of northern Anhui, and it shows strong local cultural characteristics. Sizhou opera is one of the four major opera genres of Anhui Province. It was originally called la hun qiang (the “soul-pulling tune”) and spread along both banks of the Huai River in Anhui, and it has a history of more than two hundred years. Only around 1920 did Sizhou opera acquire permanent troupes and regular performances, and only then did it begin to enter the cities.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Female, Han ethnicity, born in 1933 in Sihong, Jiangsu Province. Building on the traditional acting and vocal styles of Si opera, she developed an artistic style distinguished by graceful lyrics and delicate performance. Her representative works include Xiao Nüxu (The Young Son-in-Law) and Shi Mianhua (Picking Cotton). Within the documented technical tradition of Si Opera in Bengbu, Anhui: Sizhou opera, like Shandong's Liqin opera and Jiangsu's Huaihai opera, developed out of the same la hun qiang, so a certain blood relationship exists among the three. Sizhou opera has more than eighty full-length traditional plays and more than sixty small plays and excerpt plays. Representative repertoire includes Three Coils over the Cold Bridge, Eighth Sister Yang Rescues Her Brother, Fan Lihua Reviews the Troops, Pi Xiuying Makes Four Appeals, The Great Garden, The Story of the Silk Shoes, The Story of the Velvet Flower, Running to the Kiln and Picking Cotton. The vocal style of Sizhou opera is highly improvisational: performers may take such liberties as their own voice allows, and hence the name “yixin diao” (the heart-pleasing tune). The male voice is rough, bold and unrestrained, high-pitched and clear-carrying; the female voice is winding and lingering, and most endings leap up an octave into a drawn-out melisma — bright, pungent, and moving to the soul. Its accompanying instruments centre on the tu pipa, a rustic plucked lute, supported by the sanxian, sheng, erhu, gaohu, dizi and the like, together with four main pieces of percussion: the ban drum, the large gong, the nao cymbals and the small gong. The role types of Sizhou opera are divided mainly into large sheng, laosheng, second dan, small dan and chou. Its performance, built on narrative singing, absorbs a large measure of folk dance forms such as the yiahuachang stepping dance, the small-cart dance, the dry-boat dance, the lantern dance and the running-donkey dance; it is little constrained by operatic convention and is marked by a bright and lively, plain and frank, vigorous and pungent manner, full of the rustic flavour of northern Anhui. In performance there are many distinctive movements and steps, such as sitaijiao (four-platform stance), xuanfengshi (whirlwind), jianzigu (scissor legs), xianhezou (immortal crane walk), baimadaguan (a hundred horses in battle), choulianghuanzhu (drawing the beam and swapping the post), yanziboni (swallow flicking the mud), huaizhongbaoyue (embracing the moon in the bosom) and fenghuangshuangzhanchi (phoenix spreading both wings); performers must pay attention to the coordination and interplay of hands, eyes, waist, legs and steps. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Three Coils over the Cold Bridge": Sizhou opera has more than eighty full-length traditional plays and more than sixty small plays and excerpt plays. Representative repertoire includes Three Coils over the Cold Bridge, Eighth Sister Yang Rescues Her Brother, Fan Lihua Reviews the Troops, Pi Xiuying Makes Four Appeals, The Great Garden, The Story of the Silk Shoes, The Story of the Velvet Flower, Running to the Kiln and Picking Cotton. "Eighth Sister Yang Rescues Her Brother": Sizhou opera has more than eighty full-length traditional plays and more than sixty small plays and excerpt plays. Representative repertoire includes Three Coils over the Cold Bridge, Eighth Sister Yang Rescues Her Brother, Fan Lihua Reviews the Troops, Pi Xiuying Makes Four Appeals, The Great Garden, The Story of the Silk Shoes, The Story of the Velvet Flower, Running to the Kiln and Picking Cotton. "Fan Lihua Reviews the Troops": Sizhou opera has more than eighty full-length traditional plays and more than sixty small plays and excerpt plays. Representative repertoire includes Three Coils over the Cold Bridge, Eighth Sister Yang Rescues Her Brother, Fan Lihua Reviews the Troops, Pi Xiuying Makes Four Appeals, The Great Garden, The Story of the Silk Shoes, The Story of the Velvet Flower, Running to the Kiln and Picking Cotton. "Pi Xiuying Makes Four Appeals": Sizhou opera has more than eighty full-length traditional plays and more than sixty small plays and excerpt plays. Representative repertoire includes Three Coils over the Cold Bridge, Eighth Sister Yang Rescues Her Brother, Fan Lihua Reviews the Troops, Pi Xiuying Makes Four Appeals, The Great Garden, The Story of the Silk Shoes, The Story of the Velvet Flower, Running to the Kiln and Picking Cotton.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

National representative bearer of Si Opera, a second-batch national intangible cultural heritage project; a first-grade actor.

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. Li Baoqin · National Representative Bearer Archive