Wuligeer
01 · Historical Records
"Uliger" is a Mongolian word meaning "Mongolian-language storytelling". It took shape in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties and has a history of more than 300 years to date, and it has circulated widely all along among the Mongolian population of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and of the three northeastern provinces to the east.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Yabugan Uliger of the Tongliao area of Inner Mongolia is a branch of Uliger that has long circulated among the Mongolian people of the Horqin grasslands. Yabugan Uliger has three forms of expression: first, a prose style based mainly on narration; second, a rhymed style based mainly on singing; third, a style combining narration and singing. Its content is very wide-ranging: the short stories transmitted orally among the folk, the ancient legendary tales "Taoli" (folk epics), and the unaccompanied folk declamation and bare-song forms of narration are all included in it. In the course of narrating and singing, the performers give equal weight to the lyrical and the narrative, combining prose with poetry and speech with narration, and fully express the love of the Mongolian people of the Horqin grasslands for a happy life and their longing for a beautiful future.
Yabugan uliger
A Tongliao branch of the Mongolian tale-telling, long current among Khorchin herders and performed without instruments.
Epic and praise-song sources
Performers draw on the old heroic epic and on praise-song rhyming to shape personal styles.
A thousand hours on tape
Bai Zhalizeng recorded over a thousand hours of tale-telling for regional radio stations and edited a hundred libretti.
Collecting the libretti
Once purely oral, the branch now survives partly through the hundred-odd libretti he collected.
Radio and university teaching
He was appointed a guest professor at Inner Mongolia Normal University and other institutions while his recordings aired widely.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Yabugan Uliger of Tongliao has the Horqin grasslands as its hinterland, and the performers narrate and sing with the mouth alone, without any instrument; in the narration and singing the lyrical and the narrative carry equal weight. Compared with the Huren Uliger of Zhaluote Banner, Horqin Right Wing Middle Banner and other places, it relies more heavily on the foundation of the rhymed recitation of "Taoli" (the ancient Mongolian heroic epic) and of Huolaibao, and the short stories and ancient legends transmitted among the folk can also be admitted into the repertoire. The performer Bai Zhali Zeng of Naiman Banner indeed formed a personal style by absorbing the characteristics of Taoli and Huolaibao.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Wuligeer · Wuligeer · Wuligeer · Wuligeer.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The Yabugan Uliger is a precious heritage of Mongolian oral literature and folk art, and is of important reference value for the study of the literature and art, the social history and so on of the Mongolian people. Since the 1990s, affected by modern modes of entertainment, the Yabugan Uliger of the Tongliao area has almost died out; this precious art of a minority people is now facing the predicament of having no successors, and protection and inheritance are urgently needed. Bai Zhali Zeng (as recorded in the official archive of the associated inheritor): Male, Mongolian ethnicity, born in November 1950, native of Naiman Banner, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. He attaches importance to absorbing the characteristics of the narrative-and-singing arts such as Taoli (the ancient Mongolian heroic epic) and Huolaibao, and has formed a narrative-and-singing style of his own. Over the years he has recorded more than a thousand hours of Uliger programmes for the radio stations of various places. He has served as a teaching instructor at folk art training classes in Tongliao, Chifeng and other places, and has been engaged as a visiting professor by universities and colleges such as Inner Mongolia Normal University and Inner Mongolia University. He attaches importance to collecting and organising relevant materials, and has already sorted out more than a hundred narrative-and-singing scripts. Representative inheritor of Uliger, a national-level intangible cultural heritage project in the fifth batch. He has been training inheritors since 1982, and now all of his disciples are able to perform independently.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Laosier 02-0762
- Yangtielong 02-0763
- Hanyingfu 02-0764
- Baochaogezhu 02-0765
- Daiwode 04-1713
- Ganzhuer 05-2497
- Baizhalizeng 05-2498
- Zhangdeligen
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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