Liu Sanjie's Ballads
01 · Historical Records
The Liu Sanjie ballads are the oral literature with which the Zhuang people convey feeling and speak through song, and their origin may be traced to the ancient Zhuang antiphonal song-fair tradition. Liu Sanjie is said to have been a Zhuang singer of the Tang who could sing and chant well and improvise songs and who travelled about transmitting songs, and she is revered by the Zhuang people as the singing immortal; the Yizhou area has been a place where song fairs flourished since the Tang and Song, and the Liu Sanjie ballads were sung there from generation to generation and continually enriched, becoming an outstanding representative of Zhuang folk literature.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Zhuang people hold that the song fair took shape only because Liu Sanjie transmitted songs, and Liu Sanjie is an important mark of the widespread formation of the song fair. The songs of the fair are Liu Sanjie's songs. Liu Sanjie is regarded by the Guangxi people as the singing immortal, and Yizhou is the most representative area of the Liu Sanjie ballads and is recognised as Liu Sanjie's home town. The Liu Sanjie ballads fall roughly into seven kinds: life songs, production songs, love songs, ritual songs, riddle songs, story songs and ancient creation songs. They have the poetic character of speaking through song and a distinct national character, their transmission is relatively complete, and their kinds are rich and varied and widely spread. The Liu Sanjie ballads have exerted a profound influence throughout the country and the world, showing the charm of the living culture of the traditional folk art of the Chinese nation.
Life Songs
One of the seven kinds of the Liu Sanjie ballads, reflecting the daily life of the people.
Production Songs
One of the seven kinds of the Liu Sanjie ballads, singing of labour and production.
Love Songs
One of the seven kinds of the Liu Sanjie ballads, conveying feeling through song.
Ancient Creation Songs
One of the seven kinds of the Liu Sanjie ballads, recounting the creation of heaven and earth and the origin of the nation.
The Song Fair
The traditional Zhuang antiphonal song gathering, regarded as the singing custom formed by Liu Sanjie's transmission of songs.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Liu Sanjie ballads take Yizhou in Guangxi, now Yizhou district, as their core area, radiating to the Zhuang-concentrated areas of central and northern Guangxi and the basins of the Youjiang and Hongshui rivers; the singing customs of the song fairs of the various places are both mutually connected and each distinctive, the mountain-song tones and the scale of the fairs differing with place, together forming the vast network of the circulation of the Liu Sanjie ballads.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Now Guangxi has become a sea of song, all passed down by Sanjie's own mouth. The ballads have not only the value of cultural-history research in witnessing the nation's history and its way of expressing feeling, but also research value in ethnology, anthropology, sociology and aesthetics. But with the disappearance of the social basis of the Zhuang tradition of choosing a spouse by song, and the impact of a dominant culture and new forms of entertainment, the Liu Sanjie ballads lack successors and face the danger of being lost, and measures to protect them are needed as soon as possible.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Xie Qingliang 04-1492
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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