Ashima
01 · Historical Records
Since the Chinese-language collated edition of Ashima was published in the relevant journals in the early 1950s it has been translated into English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, Korean and other languages and circulated abroad, and in Japan it has also been adapted into radio drama, song-and-dance drama and children's drama. China's first colour wide-screen stereophonic musical song-and-dance film Ashima won the first prize for best dance film at the first Santander International Music Festival in Spain in 1982.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Ashima is a long narrative poem circulating among the Sani branch of the Yi people in the Shilin Yi Autonomous County of Yunnan. It uses the language of oral poetry to tell or sing the story of Ashima. The story of Ashima's unyielding struggle against the forces of power reveals the human ideal that light will in the end replace darkness, good and beauty replace ugliness and freedom replace oppression and confinement, and reflects the national character and spirit of the Sani Yi, who would rather break than bend. The original form of Ashima was created in the Sani Yi language and is the crystallisation of the collective wisdom of the Sani people tempered over a thousand trials, with a broad popular character. Ashima is sung in five-character lines and uses such devices as foreshadowing, exaggeration and irony and such techniques as homophony, anadiplosis, zeugma and metaphor, so that content and form are perfectly unified. As a narrative poem it can be told or sung, its tunes including the joyful tune, the old people's tune, the sorrowful tune, the weeping tune and the scolding tune; it may be sung on no fixed occasion but at such varied occasions as weddings, sacrifices, funerals, labour and daily life. In China Ashima has been adapted into a film and into Peking opera, Dian opera, opera, dance drama and Sani drama staged in various places.
The Joyful Tune
One of the tunes of Ashima, used on joyful occasions.
The Sorrowful Tune
One of the tunes of Ashima, used for sorrowful passages.
The Weeping Tune
One of the tunes of Ashima, used for lamenting passages.
The Film Ashima
China's first colour wide-screen stereophonic musical song-and-dance film, which won an international prize in 1982.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
It circulates mainly in the Sani-concentrated area of the Yi people in the Shilin Yi Autonomous County of Yunnan, and divides into a northern and a southern school that differ only slightly.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
With the change in ways of life, the educational system and the social space for the use of minority languages, the transmission of Ashima faces a crisis.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Bi Huayu 01-0030
- Wang Yufang 01-0031
- Zhang Yuying
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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