Zoumazhen Folk Tales
01 · Historical Records
The exact age of the origin of Zouma stories cannot be verified, but the Zouma market was founded in the late Ming and early Qing and quickly flourished, and the stories should have developed with it, so that their emergence and formation have a history of at least four or five hundred years. When the three great collections of Chinese folk literature were compiled in the 1980s, the catalogue of folk stories collected in the town reached eleven thousand nine hundred and fifteen, of which nine thousand seven hundred and fourteen were recorded in full; more than three thousand folk ballads, four thousand proverbs and four thousand riddles, sayings and colloquialisms were also collected. In 1990 Zouma town was named a home of folk literature by the Chongqing cultural bureau; in 1992 Gongnong village was named a Chinese folk story village; and in 1998 UNESCO and the Chinese Folk Literature and Art Association jointly gave Wei Xiande the title of Chinese folk story-teller, ten people in all nationwide.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Because the living environment and life experience of the Zouma people differ from those of ordinary people, the stories they create and tell show certain characteristics. Zouma folk stories are miscellaneous in content and diverse in type; besides the general types of folk legend such as myth and immortal tales, legends of scenery, legends of plants and animals, legends of custom and stories of life, they also hold other distinctive cultural information, such as the legend of the dragon and snake totem of the Ba people. As an important relic of ancient Ba culture, such stories are considerable in number. The town has three hundred and sixteen folk story-tellers, of whom two can tell a thousand stories, three can tell five hundred to a thousand, and ten can tell two hundred to five hundred. Zouma folk stories have such features as diversity of time and occasion of telling, multiple origins of story composition and coexistence of native and foreign culture.
The Legend of the Dragon and Snake Totem of the Ba People
An ancient Ba cultural relic held in the Zouma stories.
Wei Xiande's Folk Story Collection
The story collection of the teller published by Chongqing Press in 1989.
The Ghost Son
A story told by Liu Yuanyang and included in Zouma Town Folk Stories.
Xu Banwen and Xu Banxian
A story told by Liu Yuanyang and included in Zouma Town Folk Stories.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Zouma stories have distinctive local features, taking Ba cultural relics as their core and combining the flavour of an eastern Sichuan town. Their stories mostly arise from the hills and waters, temples, old roads and horse-trading routes around the Zouma market, and the legends of the Ba people's dragon and snake totem, legends of scenery and stories of life interweave, forming a pattern of circulation with both mountain and trading colour.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Zouma town is a town in Jiulongpo district of Chongqing where there circulates a kind of folk story orally created and transmitted by people whose occupation was to drive horses, commonly called Zouma stories. At present Zouma stories face a serious crisis, the main problem being the lack of transmitters. Salvaging and protecting Zouma stories can not only enrich the cultural life of the people but also supply research material for many disciplines such as anthropology, cultural studies, religious studies, ethnology and dialectology.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Wei Xiande 01-0014
- Liu Yuanyang 03-0782
- Wu Wen 05-1994
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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