Folk Art Forms with Local Flavor
2 min readShuochang (talking and singing), the most direct way of expression, form a genre of popular entertainment that has existed in China for hundreds of years. There are xiangsheng(comic talk), pingshu(story-telling), kuaiban(clapper ballad), dagu(story telling accompanied at the dulcimer) and errenzhuan(a song-and-dance duet popular in Northeast China).
Regarded as a trick or sideshow to make people laugh, folk talking-and-singing had been struggling to survive. The entertainers performed at Tianqiao inBeijing, Confucian Temple in Nanjing, Baoguo Temple inTianjin and the Temple of Town God in Shanghai. Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, these folk arts have been encouraged by the government and have left the marketplace to enter the state theatres.
It is said that there are about 400 forms of folk arts alive in China today, and xiangsheng(comic talk) is the most popular. As the prologue to many pieces of xiangsheng goes,”xiangsheng is a linguistic art, for which you have to be good at talking, imitating, teasing and singing,”the entertainers must be versatile. It can be performed by one person(solo comic talk), two persons (comic dialogue) or a group of people(group cross-talk).
Comic dialogue is the most common form of xiangsheng, with one person playing a leading role and the other supporting. The past several decades have seen a great number of famous artists and this form of entertainment has reached a wide audience. Many comic dialogue artists perform at teahouses and theaters in Beijing and Tianjin, where there are also large groups of fans.
Different natural environments produce different people and different forms of folk arts. Pingshu(story telling), popular in north China, is usually about historical legends and heroes. With a folding fan and a piece of wood to cue the audience, the entertainer takes the listeners to a world of fires, thunders, great strategists and chivalrous knights. It is usually performed serially, and the “to be continued”at the end of every installment never fails to tease the anxious fans. Pingtan is very popular in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai. The performers play a three-stringed instrument or a lute and sing in Suzhou dialect, which sounds beautiful in a feminine way. Other formsof folk arts have their own features, too. Shuanghuang (a two-man act, with one speaking or singing while hiding behind the other who does the acting) is humorous, danxianr(story-telling to the accompaniment of two-stringed Chinese violin and drum) melodious, Shandongkuaishu(clapper ballad originated in Shandong Province) vivid, jingyundagu(story-telling in Beijing dialect with drum accompaniment) solemn and stirring, and errenzhuan(a song-and-dance duet popular in the northeast) lively and funny.
