Meihu

01 · Historical Records

There are two traditions about the origin of Meihu. One holds that it came from Mei County and Hu County in Shaanxi, taking its name from those places; the other holds that it came from Huayin and Hua County in Shaanxi and that, because its tunes are pleasant to the ear, it was called 'the play that enchants', abbreviated to 'mi xi' and commonly known as 'mi hu'.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Meihu is also called 'mi hu', 'quzi' and 'qingqu', and is widely circulated in Shaanxi, Shanxi, Gansu, Ningxia and other places. Meihu grew out of the continuous singing of folk songs: it moved by degrees from open-air storytelling and singing into staged performance. It has two main performance forms. The first still keeps the quasi-dramatic form of open-air singing, in which the scripts are mostly excerpt plays (zhezi xi) sung right through with very little spoken dialogue; the other uses the staged form, with spoken dialogue, singing and acting together, and the choice of tune patterns is comparatively free. Meihu is a local opera genre with sharply distinctive character, rich in melody and wide in circulation, and it occupies an important position in the theatre culture of China. Yuncheng Meihu began as a form of folk-song singing and, over long circulation, gradually developed into storytelling and singing; some blind people and the poor beat time on four tiles (siye wa), accompany themselves on the sanxian (three-stringed fiddle), and go from street to street performing in the open air or singing at weddings and funerals to add to the festive mood, earning their living by it. This storytelling and singing then developed further into household theatre, performed in costume on the stage by amateur actors. Professional performance troupes appeared last, and Yuncheng Meihu thereby entered its period of maturity. The vocal music of Yuncheng Meihu belongs to the tune-pattern system (qupaiti); it has seventy-two great tunes and thirty-six minor tunes, is rich in content and is circulated over a fairly wide area. Its performance, on the basis of absorbing such conventional devices of Puzhou Bangzi as water sleeves (shuixiu), hat wings (maoxiao), boots, pheasant feathers (lingzi), chairs and handkerchiefs (pazi), formed a look of its own that won the unanimous recognition of local audiences. Yuncheng Meihu accumulated a body of repertoire works as it developed; Selling Water (Mai Shui), The Baked Bowl (Lao Wanji), The Ruyi Shop (Ruyi Dian), Beating the Scripture Hall (Da Jing Tang), Three Jinshi (San Jinshi) and Zhang Lian Sells Cloth are all representative works among them.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

Yuncheng Meihu is popular in Yuncheng, Linyi, Wanrong, Yongji and the surrounding areas of southern Shanxi Province, and belongs, together with the Meihu of Linfen, Jincheng and other places, to the southern Shanxi branch. It began as open-air storytelling and singing with time beaten on four tiles and accompaniment on the sanxian, later developed into household theatre, and finally professional performance troupes appeared; most of its plays draw on everyday folk life; its vocal repertoire has seventy-two great tunes and thirty-six minor tunes; and its performance absorbed conventional devices of Puzhou Bangzi such as water sleeves, hat wings, boots and pheasant feathers, giving it a look of its own. The Linyi County Meihu Theatre is the principal professional performance troupe of the area.

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

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

In the southern Shanxi region, Meihu singing has become one of the indispensable elements of wedding, funeral and other celebratory occasions for ordinary people. This important folk opera genre is bound to the daily life of the local populace by countless threads; its significance in folklore studies and sociology is as important as its artistic value, and it deserves serious study. Li Yingjie (as recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): male, Han, born in March 1937, native of Yishi County, Shanxi Province (now part of Linyi County). Over more than fifty years of performing he has appeared in more than two hundred plays, creating many model modern peasants as well as major and minor negative characters. His performance is close to life, witty and humorous, upright and forthright; his vocal style is rich, full and flowing, tender and moving; and he is skilled in using sustained melodic phrases to delineate character. Plays in which he starred, such as One Red Heart (Yike Hongxin), The Stream Flows East (Jianshui Dongliu) and Suona Tears (Suona Lei), were filmed as opera art films and became known in every household. Classic aria passages such as 'Tan Cao' are widely sung among the people. After retirement he continued to concern himself with the growth of young actors, visiting the county theatre's performance venues many times to see the performers and to guide young actors by explaining the play to them, still contributing his remaining strength to the development of the Linyi Meihu Theatre. Representative inheritor of Meihu (Yuncheng Meihu), a national-level intangible cultural heritage project in the third batch.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

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

• Li Yingjie 03-1099
• Pan Guoliang 05-2428
• Li Ruifang 05-2429
• Jiao Ruixia
• Yan Huifang

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

1. Meihu (Yuncheng, Shanxi) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. Li Yingjie · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗