Heianchuan
01 · Historical Records
In 1983 cadres of the Shennongjia cultural centre for the first time discovered in the Shennongjia forestry district transcripts of the seventh year of Tongzhi and the fourteenth year of Guangxu of the Qing; later, in 1986, a brush manuscript of The Story of Darkness was found at the home of the folk artist Qu Dingchao, then over eighty, of Dahengxi in Maqiao, Baokang county.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Story of Darkness is a long narrative poem of myth and history, current mainly in the Shennongjia forestry district, Fangxian and Baokang of Hubei and Wushan of Sichuan, transmitted orally and in manuscript from generation to generation among the people. As a mourning song, funeral drum song and weeding gong-and-drum it is sung by many singers on different occasions in memory of the merits of the ancestors and is deeply loved by the people. Its content is centred on the narration of a series of myths and legends, from Pan Gu splitting heaven and earth and ending the chaos and darkness to many cultural heroes struggling to create the world in the primeval flood age, and includes the four great contents of the prior heaven, the later heaven, the bubbling heaven and the governing of the world. Wide in space and time, grand in narrative structure and plain and marvellous in content, it powerfully inspires people's sense of identity with Chinese history and culture and is a rare work of folk literature. The origin of The Story of Darkness is untraceable; the earliest record is the Ming edition of the Baokang Gazetteer; because of the intervention of scholars it became widely known in academic circles, and over the following ten years or more various manuscripts were discovered one after another. In modern times scholarship has always held that the traditional Chinese culture with the Han as its main body produced no long narrative poem; the successive discovery of The Story of Darkness and a great many folk narrative poems is of great significance for re-understanding the cultural and literary history of China.
The Prior Heaven
One of the four great contents of The Story of Darkness.
The Later Heaven
One of the four great contents of The Story of Darkness.
The Bubbling Heaven
One of the four great contents of The Story of Darkness.
The Governing of the World
One of the four great contents of The Story of Darkness.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The custom of singing passages of The Story of Darkness at local funerals still survives to this day.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Heianchuan.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Among the surviving representative transmitters are Chen Qiesong, Zhou Zhengxi and Shi Guangyu of the Shennongjia forestry district and Wan Zude of Baokang county. Yet old artists who can sing the whole of The Story of Darkness are already very few and old singers who can sing passages are also fewer year by year, and it urgently needs protection. Many old manuscripts are deeply hidden in the hands of folk artists and urgently need collecting, preserving and study.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Wu Kecong 05-2020
- Chen Qiesong 05-2021
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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