Tujia Kujiage
01 · Historical Records
After the replacement of native officials by centrally appointed ones in the Qing, promoting weeping and weeping to prosper became the main content of Tujia marriage custom and prevailed; many zhuzhici of Qing poets are evidence of the prevalence of this ritual.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Tujia bridal-lament songs are long songs combining narrative and lyric sung by Tujia women in the wedding ritual. They circulate in the Tujia-concentrated areas of Hunan, Hubei, Chongqing and Guizhou, and Guzhang county in western Hunan is one of the main areas where the bridal-lament songs are sung in the Tujia language. The Tujia bridal-lament songs have a long history. At Guzhang the singing of the Tujia bridal-lament songs is made up of the five procedures of the opening wail, weeping for father and mother, weeping for brothers and sisters-in-law, weeping for sisters and weeping for kin. Mother and daughter weeping together is an important part of the bridal-lament songs, running through the whole course of the marriage; besides this there are weeping as the flowers are put on, weeping as the clothes are put on, weeping at leaving the mother's mat, weeping as the bride is carried on the back, weeping as she enters the sedan-chair and cursing the matchmaker. The Tujia bridal-lament songs mostly use such rhetorical devices as bi and xing, personification, parallelism and repetition; their lyrics are plain and concise and straightforward and easy to understand, their sentence patterns vivid, flexible and free, of varying length, with some seven-character patterns, and on the whole they are neither shi nor ci.
Weeping for Brothers and Sisters-in-Law
One of the procedures of the Tujia bridal-lament songs at Guzhang.
Weeping for Sisters
One of the procedures of the Tujia bridal-lament songs at Guzhang.
Cursing the Matchmaker
One of the distinctive contents of the bridal-lament songs.
Weeping as She Enters the Sedan-Chair
The singing content of the bridal-lament songs at the stage of the marriage.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Tujia bridal-lament songs circulate in the Tujia-concentrated areas of Hunan, Hubei, Chongqing and Guizhou, and Guzhang county in western Hunan is one of the main areas where they are sung in the Tujia language; the singing is made up of the five procedures of the opening wail, weeping for father and mother, weeping for brothers and sisters-in-law, weeping for sisters and weeping for kin.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Tujia Kujiage.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Loving the kindness of kin and grieving at parting, the singing in a long drawn-out voice, deep in feeling though joyful yet sorrowful, highlights the distinctive cultural phenomenon of Tujia marriage custom and has important academic value for studying Tujia history. The weeping, whose sound and rhyme fuse into one, is beautiful and fluent and moving, with strong literary and artistic power and value for language research. The Tujia bridal-lament songs gather the collective wisdom of Tujia women over a thousand years, with a distinctive artistic style and rich national character; they are an extremely important and precious long scroll of Tujia oral literature and of very important value for studying Tujia social history, culture, local ways and customs, national psychology and belief, language and musical art.
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)
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