Hua'er

01 · Historical Records

The Xinjiang hua'er derives from the Hezhou hua'er and the Taomin hua'er, having been introduced from Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai and other places; the influence of Xinjiang's distinctive geographical environment, ethnic customs and linguistic tones gradually made of it a folk-song form with a strongly marked regional character.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

The hua'er is deeply loved by the broad masses, and its content consists mostly of prayers for favourable weather and good harvests and of songs of working life and of love between men and women. It is sung mainly on the two occasions of daily production and life and of the “flower fair”. The hua'er has a history of about three hundred years. The Xinjiang hua'er has absorbed musical elements of the Uyghur, Kazakh and other peoples and, besides the common zhi, shang and yu modes, also employs a relatively complete minor mode and the technique of modal alternation. Compared with the hua'er within the passes, the Xinjiang hua'er has few grace notes and is mostly in a regular 2/4 metre, with a strong quality of dance. It may be performed in every kind of place—in the hills and fields, in household courtyards, on cultural squares and on stage—and its performance forms include solo, antiphonal singing, duet, chorus, acted singing and instrumental accompaniment; the accompanying instruments are mainly the banhu, erhu, sanxian, bamboo flute and yangqin, and the properties include coloured folding fans and coloured silk kerchiefs or ribbons. In performance the Hui male singers wear a small white cap, a white shirt with a black sleeveless jacket over it and long boots, while the female singers wear a gauze scarf over the head and a one-piece dress, in colours mainly white, green and pink. As a grassroots culture singing of love and of life, the hua'er is a precious form of folk oral literature and art, deeply loved by the broad masses.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

Hua'er is widely current among the eight minority nationalities—Hui, Han, Tu, Dongxiang, Bao'an, Salar, Tibetan and Yugur—of the four provinces and regions of Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia and Xinjiang; it is a mountain-song form sung outside the villages and stockades in the local Chinese dialect, commonly called the “youth”, the “mountain tune”, the “flower tune” and the “wild song” (as opposed to the “home song”, that is, the banquet song). The Xinjiang hua'er is a folk song loved by the Hui, Han, Xibe and other peoples of all parts of Xinjiang and is distributed mainly in the counties and cities of the Changji Hui autonomous prefecture and, along the Tianshan in northern Xinjiang, in Urumqi city, Shawan county, Yining city, Huocheng county, Xinyuan county and Tekes county, and in the Turpan and Hami cities and the Barkol Kazakh autonomous county of eastern Xinjiang and the Yanqi Hui autonomous county of southern Xinjiang.

Other submitting regions for the same item: Hua'er · Hua'er · Hua'er · Hua'er · Hua'er · Hua'er · Hua'er · Hua'er · Hua'er · Hua'er.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

The tunes, commonly called “ling”, of the Xinjiang hua'er number as many as twenty-three; more than a thousand hua'er of the two periods before and after the founding of New China have already been collated and published, among them such representative pieces as My Pretty Sweetheart, Thirty-Three Piculs of Buckwheat, The Moon Rises, Bright and Bright, A Singer's Words of Love and Twice Visiting My Sweetheart. To this day a great many Xinjiang hua'er are still hidden among the people and await exploration and collation, while many excellent folk hua'er singers are advanced in years, and with their passing the Xinjiang hua'er may gradually be lost. To rescue this precious folk-musical heritage of the minority nationalities has therefore become an urgent task that calls for earnest effort. (Associated bearer recorded in the official archive:) Wang Xiufang, female, Han, born December 1963, a native of Urumqi city, Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region. In 2014 she founded Xinjiang's first “hua'er courtyard” and was engaged by many primary and middle schools to teach the Xinjiang hua'er. The hua'er Fine Rain Catches Grasshoppers, adapted from a children's rhyme, has become a teaching piece of the Xinjiang hua'er. She is a representative bearer of the fifth batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage items, the hua'er (Xinjiang hua'er). She has won silver, bronze and contribution prizes many times in domestic performance activities and over the years has devoted herself to the transmission and dissemination of the Xinjiang hua'er and to the training of talent.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:

• Ma Jinshan 02-0241
• Ma Delin 02-0242
• Ma Mingshan 02-0243
• Zhao Cunlu 02-0244
• Zhang Yingzhi 02-0245
• Wang Cunfu 02-0246
• Ma Shenglin 02-0247
• Wang Lianlian 03-0819
• Liu Guocheng 03-0820
• Zhang Mingxing 03-0821
• Han Shengyuan 03-0822
• Su Ping 05-2040
• Li Guiying 05-2041
• Wang Deqin 05-2042
• Ma Handong 05-2043
• Wang Xiufang 05-2044
• Song Baoyuan
• Zhang Jianjun
• Wen Xianglian

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

1. Hua'er (Changjihuizuzizhi, Xinjiang) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. Wang Xiufang · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗