Meige
01 · Historical Records
The oral Yao'an Yi Meige originated in Guantun township of Yao'an county in the Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture of Yunnan, has a long history and is widely popular.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Meige takes its name from a Yi tune name; because most Yi folk songs are sung to the Meige tune they are collectively called Meige. In the long course of oral transmission there formed an influential long historical narrative poem of the Yi, transmitted for a thousand years in the Yi-concentrated stockade villages of Yao'an county. Meige has four types: old people's Meige, middle-aged Meige, young people's Meige and children's Meige. Old people's Meige, also called red Meige, chiefly sings of the creation of heaven and earth and the founding of enterprises and also reflects the labour and life of the Yi; middle-aged Meige sings of the hardship of production and life after young men and women marry, its content and tune fairly plaintive and sad; young people's Meige, also called mountain Meige, reflects the pure love of Yi young men and women and belongs to the nature of courtship mountain songs, capable of improvisation in the singing; children's Meige is the Yi nursery song, popularly the children's tune, sung antiphonally by groups of Yi youngsters and children.
Red Meige (Old People's Meige)
The type of Meige singing of the creation of heaven and earth and the founding of enterprises.
Mountain Meige (Young People's Meige)
The type of Meige reflecting the pure love of Yi young men and women.
Children's Tune (Children's Meige)
The Yi nursery song sung antiphonally by Yi youngsters and children.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The orally transmitted Yi creation epic is at present five thousand seven hundred and seventy lines long, divided into the four parts of creation, making things, marriage and love songs, and burial.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Meige outlines the history of the ancient development of the Yi and the labour and social life of the Yi forebears and displays the customs of the ancient Yi forebears in courtship, marriage, burial and remembrance of kin, with important folkloric and literary research value. Under the impact of modernisation the transmitters of the Yi Meige are decreasing year by year and it urgently needs protection. Meige is one of the most influential and widely current works of the Yi creation epic, praised as the encyclopaedia of the Yi.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Guo Youzhen 03-0793
- Luo Ying
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
This static English edition is rendered at the edge for search engines, AI crawlers and readers without JavaScript; it mirrors the bilingual dossier. 阅读中文版，或返回 英文名录。