Handiaoguangguang

01 · Historical Records

Before the Republic era, in Han diao guangguang performances the sheng and jing roles did not wear boots but commonly performed in straw shoes; the dan roles only powdered their faces and put flowers in their hair before coming on stage.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

The vocal style of Han diao guangguang belongs to the banqiang variant system; it has both the stirring and impassioned beauty of Qinqiang and the elegant, gentle character of southern Shaanxi local music. The dan vocal style is high and resonant, insisting on singing the “hard three-beat” tune; the painted-face roles are good at the “stubborn voice”, pitched an octave high and mostly sung in falsetto, with a long drawn-out ending, hence known as “old and young in pairs”. The metrical patterns of the vocal style include erliu, manban, jianban, lantou and many others, and are further divided into “soft”, “hard”, “fast” and “slow”. “Soft” is the bitter tone that expresses sorrowful feeling, “hard” the gay tone that expresses joy, “fast” the quick beat and “slow” the slow beat. The accompaniment of Han diao guangguang is divided into the wen (civil) and wu (martial) ensembles. The wen field originally took the gaiban erxian as its principal instrument and later changed to the banhu, with the jinghu, haidi, sanxian and others playing in concert; the wu field uses percussion instruments such as the jian drum, the flat drum, the hook gong, the cymbals, the bangzi, the yazi and the wooden fish. Han diao guangguang performance pursues large-scale exaggeration, with many unique techniques such as “gutong” (encircling the tub), “salianhua” (scattering the lotus), “shuayizi” (playing the chair), “gunjiazi” (staff frame), “diaomaogai” (swinging the furry cap), “bianlian” (changing the face), “huanyi” (changing clothes) and “chuaihuo” (concealing fire), together with many special stances of its own for sabre and spear, staff, fist and footwork, leaps and somersaults. In recent years the audience for Han diao guangguang has dwindled day by day, troupes and opera companies have dissolved one after another, artists have scattered, and traditional repertory works, tune patterns and performance techniques have already been or are about to be lost.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

Han diao guangguang, also called Han diao Qinqiang, southern-route Qinqiang or guangguang opera, is a clapper vocal genre formed when Qinqiang from the Guanzhong plain entered the Hanzhong region in the late Ming and was combined with the local dialect and folk music. It circulates mainly in Hanzhong and Ankang in southern Shaanxi, and once spread to northern Sichuan, eastern Gansu and northern Hubei. Its costumes and make-up are simple, but its singing art is very exacting. Local people are used to listening at night to the “ten-li great tune”, and to listen to it from afar rather than near, which is called “the swallow passing over the beam”.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

Han diao guangguang has a rich repertory: more than seven hundred traditional plays in all, of which over 560 are full-length plays and over 170 are zhezi plays (act extracts); more than a hundred works, among them Liu Gao Sharpens His Knife, the Patterned Iron Sword, Sunset Mountain, Water Fills Jinyang and the Red Tasselled Cloak, are unique to Han diao guangguang, while works such as the Emperor's Pearl, the Shadowless Sword, the Murmuring Pavilion and Maoli on the Grass Slope have already been lost or survive only in fragment in other genres. At present only one troupe in Nanzheng County is still keeping performances going, and it still faces the embarrassment of inadequate funding and a gap in the succession of talent, so it cannot be sustained for long; practical and workable measures must be taken to rescue and protect it. Tao Heqing (as recorded in the official dossier of an associated inheritor): male, of the Han nationality, born in 1940 in Nanzheng, Shaanxi. In the several decades he has spent in the art, Tao Heqing has performed more than seventy plays; he is able to portray sheng, dan, chou and mo roles of every kind, and his performance is deep and solid, with a character of its own. His representative works include Forcing the Hero up Liangshan and the Three Forked Junction. Representative inheritor of Han diao guangguang, a second-batch national-level intangible cultural heritage item, and a national third-grade performer. Xu Xinping (as recorded in the official dossier of an associated inheritor): female, of the Han nationality, born in 1941 in Chenggu, Shaanxi. In more than fifty years in the art Xu Xinping has shaped more than a hundred artistic characters, and her performance is exquisite and delicate, rich in inner meaning. Her representative works include the Black Boat and Buying a Smile for a Thousand Gold. Representative inheritor of Han diao guangguang, a second-batch national-level intangible cultural heritage item, and a national second-grade performer.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:

• Tao Heqing 02-0460
• Xu Xinping 02-0461
• Li Tianming 02-0462

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

1. Handiaoguangguang (Hanzhong, Shaanxi) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. Tao Heqing · National Representative Bearer Archive
3. Xu Xinping · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗