Tujia Kujiage
01 · Historical Records
The Xiangxi Tujia bridal-lament songs have a long history and were very prevalent in the late Ming and early Qing; the Qing Tujia poet Peng Qiutan recorded that the song of the ten sisters, longing for kin and grieving at parting, was sung in a long drawn-out voice, very sorrowful, tears following the voice, the surviving sense of the bamboo mantle.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Xiangxi Tujia bridal-lament songs are long folk narrative ballads sung in the Tujia language, current mainly in the Wuling mountain area of the Yunnan-Guizhou plateau outranges and the Tujia-concentrated areas of Hunan, Hubei, Chongqing and Guizhou. Crying at marriage is an important part of the ritual procedure of Tujia marriage, and the singing of the bridal-lament songs goes along with the procedure of crying at marriage. Celebrating a girl's marriage with weeping embodies the distinctive cultural consciousness of the Tujia. The bridal-lament songs are also called the song of the ten sisters, specifically describing the scene of Tujia crying at marriage. Tujia girls in western Hunan all learn to sing the bridal-lament songs from childhood; whether one can sing them is a measure of a woman's wit. In the Tujia marriage ritual the custom of singing instead of weeping and accompanying joy with weeping is still prevalent, full of the cultural and entertaining atmosphere of parting and longing, joy and delight. In artistic style the Xiangxi Tujia bridal-lament songs have plain language, vivid images, fresh mood and harmonious rhyme; in means of expression they generally use such devices as bi and xing, personification, exaggeration and homophonic pun, their cleverness striking.
The Opening Wail
One of the procedures of the Tujia bridal-lament songs at Guzhang.
Weeping for Father and Mother
One of the core procedures of the Tujia bridal-lament songs.
Mother and Daughter Weeping Together
An important part of the bridal-lament songs, running through the whole course of the marriage.
The Song of the Ten Sisters
Another name for the bridal-lament songs.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Xiangxi Tujia bridal-lament songs circulate mainly in the Wuling mountain area of the Yunnan-Guizhou plateau outranges and the Tujia-concentrated areas of Hunan, Hubei, Chongqing and Guizhou, especially concentrated in Yongshun county of Hunan; sung in the Tujia language, they go along with the procedure of the Tujia custom of crying at marriage.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Tujia Kujiage.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The Tujia bridal-lament songs handed down as women's oral literature have relatively high academic value for studying and developing Chinese folk literature. Sung in the Tujia language, they have important social value for studying the history, social life and religious belief of the Tujia and for protecting the Tujia language.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Peng Zuxiu 04-1503
- Yan Shuihua 05-2017
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。