Jingzhou Huagu Opera

01 · Historical Records

Jingzhou Huagu Opera, formerly called Huaguzi or Tianmian Huagu Opera, is a local operatic form that developed gradually after the late Ming on the basis of folk singing forms of the Jianghan Plain such as the sanbang drum, stilt-walking and the lotus-gathering boat, continually absorbing the plays, vocal styles and performance of other operatic genres. It was popular in all the areas under the former Jingzhou jurisdiction and reached the neighbouring southern Hubei and northern Hunan.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Jingzhou Huagu Opera is one of the main local operatic genres of Hubei Province, formerly called Huaguzi or Tianmian Huagu Opera. It is a local operatic form that grew gradually after the late Ming, building on the folk singing forms of the Jianghan Plain such as the sanbang drum, stilt-walking and the lotus-gathering boat and continually absorbing the plays, vocal styles and performance of other operatic genres. It was popular in all the areas under the former Jingzhou jurisdiction and reached the neighbouring southern Hubei and northern Hunan. Jingzhou Huagu Opera is recorded as having 197 plays, among them Drawing the Door Bolt, Pinching the Vegetable Stems, Complaining to the Lord, Standing on the Flower Wall, Twin Bamboo Shoots, Beating the Lotus Rats, Picture of the River and Han, Congratulations at the Dragon Boat Festival, Patching the Quilt with Darning, Teasing the Toad, the Three Officials Hall, Leaving the Shop, the Interrogation in the Underworld and Complaining to the Village Scribe. In its early period the role types of Jingzhou Huagu Opera were mainly xiaosheng, xiaochou and xiaodan. Later, as the repertory changed, five role types formed: xiaosheng, shengjiao, zhengdan, huadan and chou. Its performance is free and agile, light and lively, full of strong local colour and the breath of folk life, with special techniques such as "flower-picking", "colour-bearing" and "bowl-biting". The music of Jingzhou Huagu Opera belongs to the daluoqiang system. Its singing divides into two main categories, the principal vocal system and the small tunes. The principal vocal system belongs to the banqiang type and includes the gaoqiang, daluoqiang, sipingqiang and qishuiqiang styles; the small tunes fall into three classes, single labelled melodies, specially composed tunes and interpolations, and the pieces are short, the melodies beautiful, the rhythms light and lively, and the colouring rich. The traditional performing form of Jingzhou Huagu Opera is "one voice sings and all join in, with gong and drum accompaniment". Its vocal styles are high and plain, its tunes have a wide compass, and their melodies make many large leaps; the male and female vocal styles alike are sung in the natural register combined with falsetto, and singing, choral support and percussion interlock closely, forming a distinctive performing style. The main accompanying instruments include the bian drum, bamboo clappers, cymbals, large gong, horse gong, small gong and suona, and the percussion instruments have roughly twenty-odd labelled melodies of their own.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

Jingzhou Huagu Opera takes the Tianmen, Mianyang (today Xiantao) and Qianjiang area of the Jianghan Plain as the core of its distribution. The Tianmian area is its birthplace, while Qianjiang has become a centre of transmission in our own time thanks to its professional troupes and its mechanisms for training talent. The Hubei Provincial Flower Drum Opera Art Research Institute (the Hubei Provincial Experimental Flower Drum Theatre) is located there, and together with the troupes of Tianmen, Jianli, Honghu and other places it forms the working network of the genre.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

Jingzhou Huagu Opera is rooted in the fertile soil of the Jianghan Plain. Around the turn of the twenty-first century it met an irresistible crisis, and excavating and rescuing the genre is of vital importance to the transmission, protection and study of the folk culture and art of the Jingchu region. Hu Xinzhong (official archival record of the associated inheritor): Male, of Han ethnicity, born in 1953, native of Tianmen, Hubei. In 1969 Hu Xinzhong began work in the Qianjiang Flower Drum Theatre and in the Hubei Provincial Experimental Flower Drum Theatre. He received guidance in turn from many experts in Peking opera, Han opera, Chu opera and his own genre; his range is broad, and he can play every role among the male roles with ease and vividness. His representative works include Standing on the Flower Wall, The Red Lantern, The Family Case, Bloody Injustice and Feuds of the Open Country. Representative inheritor of Jingzhou Huagu Opera under the second national-level batch of intangible cultural heritage projects, and a first-class performer. Sun Shi'an (official archival record of the associated inheritor): Female, of Han ethnicity, born in December 1947, native of Qianjiang City, Hubei Province. A national first-class performer. She has successively starred in more than forty full-length plays and more than twenty short plays. Representative inheritor of Jingzhou Huagu Opera under the fourth national-level batch of intangible cultural heritage projects. In 1984 The Family Case, in which she starred, was commended by the Ministry of Culture when it was performed in Beijing. Feuds of the Open Country, in which she starred, won five gold awards at the 1995 Hubei Province New Drama Performance Showcase, for script, direction, stage design and leading performance among others; in 1997 it won the Chinese Cao Yu Dramatic Literature Award, the Hubei Province Five-One Project Award, and the Outstanding Performance Award conferred by the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and the China Dramatists Association. In 1998 she received the Wenhua Performance Award, the eighth Chinese Culture and Arts Government Award presented by the Ministry of Culture. For many years she has been devoted to performing Jingzhou Huagu Opera, collecting materials and training successors. She has been appointed by several colleges and schools to teach Jingzhou Huagu Opera, and has trained a number of well-known flower drum artists, most of whom have become the leading performers of flower drum in their own troupes and have won a variety of provincial and municipal awards.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

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

• Hu Xinzhong 02-0583
• Sun Shian 04-1645
• Li Chunhua 05-2370
• Wu Peiyi

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

1. Jingzhou Huagu Opera (Qianjiang, Hubei) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. Hu Xinzhong · National Representative Bearer Archive
3. Sun Shian · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗