Donghe Opera

01 · Historical Records

Around the middle of the Ming dynasty, the Yiyang gaoqiang of northeastern Jiangxi reached the rural areas of southern Jiangxi, and sitting-hall troupes appeared that sang the Yiyang gaoqiang in unaccompanied style. By the early Qing dynasty there emerged the Yuhe Troupe of gaoqiang, which mainly performed extended serial plays in the Yiyang gaoqiang. Thereafter the Yihuang style, Qinqiang, the bangzi luantan style and the xipi mode were introduced one after another, and Donghe opera, the local genre that sings gaoqiang, kunqu and the various pihuang and bangzi luantan styles, gradually matured. It spread from Ganzhou County to Xingguo County, Ningdu County, Shicheng County, Ruijin City, Yudu County, Guangchang County, Huichang County, Nankang District of Ganzhou City, Xinfeng County, Anyuan County and Xunwu County and other counties and districts of southern Jiangxi, and likewise to parts of Fujian and Guangdong provinces.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Ganxian District of Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province lies at the centre of southern Jiangxi, where merchants and travellers from north and south gather thickly. In the eleventh year of the Shunzhi reign of the Qing dynasty, Suzhou artists brought back by merchants of Ganzhou County formed the family kunqu troupe known as the Ningxiu Troupe. The repertoire of Donghe opera comprises three parts, gaoqiang, kunqu and tanqiang. Preserved from the gaoqiang side are nearly thirty extended serial plays including Mulian Xi (The Mulian Play) and nearly fifty single-act plays; the kunqu scripts include about five complete plays such as Shuang Xiong Meng (The Dream of the Two Bears) and about eighty single-act plays, and in Hua Bao (The Flowered Report) two flower-lang youths sing antiphonally and dance, which is highly entertaining; the tanqiang repertoire comprises nearly two hundred complete plays and more than two hundred single-act plays. The vocal melodies include nearly eighty gaoqiang tune patterns and nearly eighty kunqu tune patterns; the tanqiang melodies include erhuang, xipi, bangzi tunes and nanci beidiao (southern ci with northern diao); and the wind-and-percussion repertoire comprises more than one hundred pieces, together with more than fifty gong-and-drum notation patterns. The gaoqiang music includes Yiyang gaoqiang vocal styles accompanied by big gongs and big drums, Qingyang gaoqiang tune patterns accompanied by small gongs and small drums, and the sonorities of Siping gaoqiang, whose pitch is level and whose melody is slow. The role types are divided into three lines and nine categories, including laosheng, xusheng and xiaosheng; wen jing, wu jing and chou jing; and laodan, zhengdan and xiaodan (who also play huadan, caidan and daomadan). Its performance abounds in special techniques, including the Eighteen Arhats posture, dragon claws, tiger claws, eye-flickering, and acrobatic items such as nailing and raking; the jing roles roll their eyes and tremble their cheeks, the sheng roles make their shoes fly and change their faces, and the chou roles conjure snakes by sleight of hand. Donghe opera brings together the complete repertory of gaoqiang, kunqu and luantan styles. The characteristics of the different styles differ yet are reconciled into a single whole, which makes it a vivid witness to the exchange and fusion among the genres of traditional Chinese theatre, and it has a certain reference value for the study of the combination, formation and development of southern multi-style genres.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

At the same time, as an important carrier of the regional culture of southern Jiangxi, Donghe opera reflects the local folk customs and manners, expresses the ideas and concepts, moral ethics and ideal aspirations of the people, and possesses considerable social and cultural value.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

Donghe opera takes its name from the Donghe river basin in Ganzhou County, where it originated at the confluence of the Zhang and Gong rivers at the source of the Gan River in Jiangxi Province; it is also called the 'Donghe grand troupe'. Several amateur Donghe opera troupes and Donghe opera inheritance bases now take part in its transmission, and the Cultural Centre of Ganxian District, Ganzhou City holds hand-copied scriptbooks and other physical materials relating to it.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

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

• Zhong Liexuan 05-2475

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

1. Donghe Opera (Gan, Jiangxi) · China ICH Official Project Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗