Hanchuanshanshu
01 · Historical Records
Hanchuan shanshu, a form of exhortatory storytelling, took shape in the late Qing dynasty and the early Republic of China, evolving out of the "sacred edict" preaching activities that had begun in the early Qing dynasty. The traditional performance form was one person speaking and singing without accompaniment; during the Republican period it developed into two-person or multi-person performance in which the singers took different role types.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Hanchuan shanshu, abbreviated as "shanshu" and also called "weikai yan" ("before speech begins"), is a form of quyi storytelling that is widely popular in Hanchuan, Tianmen, Mianyang, Qianjiang, Xiaogan and other places in Hubei Province. It flourishes most in Hanchuan, which also holds its deepest reserves of tradition. Its performance sequence is divided into such items as "xuan" (declamation), "jiang" (narrative), "da" (reply) and "dui" (correspondence), and its content is largely marked by high-platform moral instruction and by exhortation to goodness and prayers for blessing. Its vocal styles and tunes include "Da Xuan Qiang" (great declamation tune), "Xiao Xuan Qiang" (small declamation tune), "Ya Qiang" (forked tune), "Suo Luo Qiang" (suolo tune), "Nu Chi Qiang" (angry-rebuke tune) and "Ai Si Qiang" (mourning tune), among others. The more common traditional pieces of Hanchuan shanshu include "Di Xue Cheng Zhu" (A Drop of Blood Becomes a Pearl), "Mi Feng Zhi" (Bee Juice), "An An Song Mi" (An An Delivers Rice) and "Jie Lie Fang" (The Chaste-Reputation Archway), among others. The preaching sequence of shanshu forms a complete system of its own: "xuan" is the lead speaker declaiming words of exhortation to the world in a clear voice, "jiang" is the narration of stories in the spoken language, and "da" and "dui" are question and answer exchanged between the chorus singers and the lead speaker, answering and echoing each other. The song books draw mostly on folk legends, baojuan scripture and local remarkable cases, telling causal stories in which good and evil within a single family meet with their reward; when a section has been finished the lead speaker lays down the song book and comments on it, so the content is largely marked by high-platform moral instruction and exhortation to goodness and prayers for blessing.
The fourfold programme
The four-part programme of proclamation, narration and answering that structures a performance.
Blood into Pearls and Bee's Honey
Common traditional titles of the genre, all turning on family tales of good and evil repaid.
An'an Delivers Rice
A traditional piece drawn from tales of filial children, closed by the speaker's own commentary.
The vocal schemes
The genre's vocal schemes, chosen according to the mood of the episode within the fixed programme.
Xu Zhongde and his added tunes
The professional reciter Xu Zhongde, who wrote fifty books and added comic and drum-song tunes to the repertory.
Proclaiming the sacred edict
The genre evolved out of the early-Qing practice of publicly proclaiming the imperial sacred edict.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Centred on the urban and rural areas of Hanchuan, Hanchuan shanshu circulates in Tianmen, Mianyang (today Xiantao), Qianjiang, Xiaogan, Yingcheng, Yunmeng and other cities and counties of the Jianghan Plain, sharing a common origin with local exhortation-to-goodness activities such as the preaching of sacred edicts. The preaching platform is usually set up in a teahouse, a guildhall, under the eaves of a temple or on a high platform at a street corner in the busy centre of a market town, with one person delivering the text and a crowd listening all around. After the Republican period the form developed from one person speaking and singing without accompaniment into two-person or multi-person performance in different role types; the lead speaker and the chorus singers take turns following the sequence of xuan, jiang, da and dui, and the vocal style uses the Hanchuan local pronunciation, with a delivery that is not fast, so that listeners in the street market can hear the words clearly.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The transmission and development of Hanchuan shanshu now faces unprecedented difficulties: there is a break in the line of young performers, the tradition is being seriously lost, and it urgently needs support and protection. Xu Zhongde (per the official archival record of an associated inheritor): male, of Han ethnicity, born in 1934, a native of Hanchuan, Hubei. A professional preaching performer. He composed more than fifty shanshu texts and adapted or transplanted more than a hundred and fifty. When preaching he enunciates clearly, his voice is resonant and his language firm, achieving the effect of "tongue in flower, mouth in fragrance, face in colour and eye in light"; and on the basis of the original vocal styles he newly created the comic tune (huaji qiang), the yugu drum tune and short songs, among others. Representative works include "Bai Gong Ji" (The White Rooster), "Xianglin Sao" (Xianglin's Wife) and "Dou E Yuan" (The Injustice Done to Dou E), among others. Representative inheritor of the Hanchuan shanshu item among the national-level intangible cultural heritage projects in the second batch.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Xu Zhongde 02-0748
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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