Santiao
01 · Historical Records
By the middle of the nineteenth century Santiao was already flourishing in the countryside; in the early twentieth century it began to be performed in the teahouses and storytelling houses inside the temple of Huzhou Prefecture; by the middle of the 1930s schools distinguished by locality had gradually formed, including the Huzhou school, the Deqing school, the Nanxun school, the Tongxiang school and others.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Santiao, also called “xianban shu”, is current and distributed in Huzhou and Jiaxing in the north of Zhejiang Province, and it is a quyi genre of considerable influence in the northern Zhejiang region; it gets its name from the percussion instrument “santiao ban” used to accompany the singing. It takes the “quanshi diao” (the admonishing-the-world tune) as its basic singing tune, and has variations of metrical pattern, sentence form, tempo and vocal style; the metrical patterns in common use are danban, lianban, gunban and others, and in performance such devices as repeated phrases and the “xiaoban” pattern are employed. In the dan-dang (single-act) form one person sings and strikes the santiao ban for accompaniment. In the shuang-dang (two-person) form two people sing: the lead singer strikes the santiao ban while narrating and singing and is called the “front stage”; the other beats a flat drum, a ban-gu or ban for accompaniment and is called the “back stage”, and joins in the chorus from the last syllable of the “closing sentence”, which is called “tuoli tou”. The subjects sung in Santiao are differentiated according to the sex of the performers. In the early days the performance was dominated by male artists, the rhythm brisk, the manner plain and manly, and the repertoire consisted mainly of long pieces on historical romance, martial adventure, legal cases and heroic legend; female artists afterwards came on the scene, the repertoire was broadened, and subjects such as the romances of everyday life were gradually added. There are more than sixty traditional long pieces such as Xiao Jinqian and Jintai Zhuan, and more than twenty opening pieces such as Shaoxiang Tangshu and Wopao Tangshu. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, some book-scripts on modern subjects were created. Over a long historical period Santiao was always something that the urban and rural people of northern Zhejiang and the surrounding areas were glad to hear and to see; it was one of the main ways in which people consumed cultural entertainment, and it is of important significance for enriching the forms of cultural entertainment in the present day.
Xiao Jinqian (The Small Sum of Money)
There are more than sixty traditional long pieces such as Xiao Jinqian and Jintai Zhuan, and more than twenty opening pieces such as Shaoxiang Tangshu and Wopao Tangshu.
Jintai Zhuan (The Golden Terrace Tale)
There are more than sixty traditional long pieces such as Xiao Jinqian and Jintai Zhuan, and more than twenty opening pieces such as Shaoxiang Tangshu and Wopao Tangshu.
Shaoxiang Tangshu (The Incense-Burning Hall Book)
There are more than sixty traditional long pieces such as Xiao Jinqian and Jintai Zhuan, and more than twenty opening pieces such as Shaoxiang Tangshu and Wopao Tangshu.
Wopao Tangshu (The Japanese-Robe Hall Book)
There are more than sixty traditional long pieces such as Xiao Jinqian and Jintai Zhuan, and more than twenty opening pieces such as Shaoxiang Tangshu and Wopao Tangshu.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Santiao is sung and narrated in the Huzhou dialect; the language is plain and easy to understand, and the singing contains much local colour and slang, with a strong flavour of the countryside. Its performance form is divided into the dan-dang (single-act) form and the shuang-dang (two-person) form. The traditional repertoire is divided into two classes: long pieces, commonly called “zhengshu”, and opening pieces, commonly called “tangshu”.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Transmission from master to apprentice is the principal mode of transmission for Santiao. As a representative quyi genre of the northern Zhejiang region, Huzhou Santiao contains a rich store of social, historical and cultural information about the Huzhou area, and it has important value for local humanities research. Its long pieces are for the most part adapted from huaben novels and tanci singing books, while its short pieces draw largely on the nourishment of folk ballads; plain and simple in manner, they are full of interest and flavour, they are distinctive within popular literature, and they have high literary and artistic value.
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。