Luantan

01 · Historical Records

From 1911 to 1936 was the prime of Luantan. Its principal ban forms are the slow ban (manban), the second ban (erban), the fast ban (kuaiban) and the free ban (sanban), and more than one hundred qupai have come down to the present day.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Luantan is a local operatic vocal genre that rose in the late Kangxi reign of the Qing dynasty, and by the Jiaqing and Daoguang reigns it had already formed a style of its own. After the merging of Peking opera and Hui opera, Luantan stood on its own. During the Xianfeng reign of the Qing dynasty the Tianxingkui training school founded by the brothers Guan Yuzhu and Guan Yutang is the earliest record of a Nanyan Luantan company. The singing of Nanyan Luantan is bold and stirring, beautiful and pleasing to the ear. Nanyan Luantan is a multi-vocal genre whose singing is based mainly on the banqiang (metrical) system, supplemented by the qupai system. Its melodies are extended and highly varied, its lyrics are built in paired upper and lower lines, and its basic line lengths are the seven-syllable and the ten-syllable line. In Luantan both male and female singers articulate the words in the natural voice and prolong the phrases in falsetto. In singing and accompaniment the flutes and sheng have melodies of their own independent of the voice, hovering close to it yet apart from it, and producing a polyphonic colouring. When accompanying the slow ban the orchestra can also improvise freely in its instrumental technique within the prescribed framework of the ban form. Nanyan Luantan has many ban forms and a rich repertory of qupai. Its orchestra organisation is called “three wen and four wu”. The three wen are the suona, the qudi (bent flute) and two sheng — the suona and the qudi are doubled on one player and the two sheng are played by two men, hence “three wen”; the wu, or martial side, comprises the skin gong, the great gong, the cymbals and the hand gong, four players in all, hence “four wu”. The performance of Nanyan Luantan is grand and majestic, tragic and high-pitched. Its role types divide into five great lines — sheng, dan, jing, mo and chou — and each line has a fairly strict set of performance conventions, each distinctive in singing, recitation, acting and percussion, so as to express the character traits of different kinds of person. Its traditional repertory includes Nanyang Cheng (The Nanyang City), Liang Lang Shan (The Two Wolves on the Mountain), Xia Bian Ting (Going to the Frontier Court), Diao Kou (Summoning the Bandits), Duo Yin (Seizing the Seal), Ping Jiangnan (Pacifying Jiangnan) and Pai Wang Zan (Singing the King's Praise).

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

Nanyan Luantan circulates in the central and southern parts of Hebei and is one of the schools of Hebei Luantan; it preserves the original vocal styles and ban forms of Qing-dynasty Luantan, and it takes its name from the two villages of Dongnanyan and Xinan'yan where it circulates chiefly, in Gaoyi County, Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province. In the central and southern Hebei region there is a saying, “I would rather give up a meal than miss Luantan”: whether for a wedding or a funeral, or at New Year and other festivals, an opera performance must include a Luantan play, and the troupe engaged must be a Luantan troupe. This is a vivid illustration of how closely the life of Nanyan Luantan is bound up with that of the local people.

Other submitting regions for the same item: Luantan · Luantan · Luantan · Luantan.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

Nanyan Luantan is transmitted above all through its opera companies. After the founding of the People's Republic of China the villagers pooled money to form the Qunying Luantan Troupe, which performed a large number of plays and trained a great many performers. Since then Nanyan Luantan has had its rises and falls, but it has been transmitted down to the present day. In the form of theatre, Nanyan Luantan artistically reflects the changes of history and the ways and feelings of the people, carrying their moral ideas and their ideals and beliefs, and it has high artistic, social and cultural value. Geng Shuyi (official archival record of the associated inheritor): Male, of Han ethnicity, born in September 1937, a native of Gaoyi County, Hebei Province. In 1954 he took as his master Shi Fengyun, a Luantan artist from Julu who was the favourite pupil of Wu Faxu (styled Laozhen), the second-generation Hebei Luantan artist recorded since Luantan was first written down; he afterwards followed his master to play as a guest with the Rixin Luantan Troupe of Gaocheng. In 1956 he returned to Nanyan Village and formed the Qunying Luantan Troupe. His manner of singing is unusual: he created a high-pitched laosheng singing for painted-face roles, and the trailing phrases of his singing often end with a falling cadence. He has the plots of dozens of plays thoroughly at command, and the troupe compiled and wrote the Nanyan Luantan Play Series from his recollections. A representative inheritor of Luantan (Nanyan Luantan) in the fifth batch of national intangible cultural heritage projects. He has handed on the art of Luantan to the next generation without reserve, teaching by oral transmission and by imitation, and has trained a group of young actors for the troupe.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

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

• Xu Dinglong 02-0532
• Fu Linhua 02-0533
• Meng Fanzhen 03-1020
• Geng Shuyi 05-2350
• Jiang Guifeng 05-2351
• Lin Hongyang

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

1. Luantan (Gaoyi, Hebei) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. Geng Shuyi · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗