The Oral Tradition Of Yangzhou Storytelling

This text examines the traditional oral narrative of the Yangzi delta.

Chinese storytelling has survived through more than a millennium into our own time, while similar oral arts have fallen into oblivion in the West. Under the main heading of 'The Eternal Storyteller', in August 1996 the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies hosted an International Workshop on Oral Literature in Modern China. To this meeting, the first of its kind in Europe, five special guests were invited - master tellers from Yangzhou: Wang Xizotang, Li Xintang, Fei Zhengliang, Dai Buzhang and Hui Zhaolong. The volume derived from this meeting includes an introductory article written by John Miles Foley entitled 'A Comparative View on Oral Traditions'. Thereafter, a wide range of topics relating to Chinese oral literature is covered under the headings: 'Historical Lines', 'A Spectrium of Genres', 'Studies of Yangzhou and Suzhou Story- telling' and 'Performances of Yangzhou Storytelling'. However, the present volume does more than include papers derived from the meeting. It is also lavishly illustrated in word and picture from performances by the guest-storytellers. In so doing, the world of Chinese story telling is not just described and analysed - it is also brought to life.

This volume has its origins in the project "Large-scale Registration of Chinese Storytelling," which involved the recording on film of 360 hours of performances by the four master of Yangzhou storytelling, Dai Buzhang, Fei Zhengliang, Gao Zaihua, and Ren Jitang. Four sets of these films have been deposited (in Washington D.C., Taipei, Beijing, and Copenhagen) so that future generations of scholars will have access to this unique material. With all text appearing in both English and Chinese and with its subject matter brought alive by a wealth of photographs plus a 60-minute film on VCD, this volume promises to be a classic work in its field.

Chinese Storytellers takes us to the teahouses and hidden corners of Yangzhou to explore the ancient art of Chinese storytelling (shuoshu).

This mammoth study is a major contribution to the study of Chinese literature, making available to scholars a genuine storyteller's script from China's Yangzhou oral tradition, dated to the late Qing period (1880-1910). This rare script is published in its complete form (all 367 pages), both in facsimile and transcription, with an English translation also made. Its publication is of high importance not only to preserve knowledge about one of the famous oral traditions of China, but also as a unique documentation of the interplay between orality and literacy in Chinese storytelling. The book is also the first translation into a European language of the popular 'Western Han' narrative, one of a corpus of Chinese semi-historical romances brought to life in recent decades after the discovery in 1974 of the terracotta army commemorating the life and achievements of the first Chinese emperor. Moreover, this storyteller's version is unique and entertaining. The work is an ideal classroom book for students studying Chinese history, literature, oral literature, storytelling, etc.

One of the famous canal cities of the world and a former center of culture, trade, transportation, and fashion, the old town of Yangzhou evokes romantic bridges, beautiful courtesans, fine gardens, and eccentric painters. It is also remembered as a war-torn ruin after the Qing conquest and the Taiping Rebellion, and as a city in decline as trade shifted to seaports and railways. Yangzhou, A Place in Literature, the first anthology to center on a Chinese city and its local region, offers a wealth of literary, semi-literary, and oral texts representing social life over three hundred years of dramatic change between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. The selections in this volume represent a wide range of literary forms and styles, both elite and popular, with subjects ranging from literature, history, theater, and art to the history of architecture and gardening, and of material culture at large. Readers will come across rarely found details of everyday life, the sights, smells, and sounds of the lanes and teahouses, a world of taverns, pilgrimages, communal baths, fish markets, salt merchants, acting troupes, and food in one of the wealthiest cities of imperial China. Each text has an introductory essay and rich textual notes by an expert in the relevant field. The general introduction provides an in-depth discussion of the roles of the local in historical, cultural, literary, and linguistic terms, as mirrored by the wide range of translated sources collected in this volume. The selected texts are historically and intellectually important in their own right, but the volume greatly enhances their collective value by combining them, arranging them in historical sequence, and providing a dense network of cross-references that invite comparisons and reveal contrasts in style, form, focus, and topic. With its compelling accounts of material culture, urban spaces, entertainment, and gender, Yangzhou, A Place in Literature will fascinate scholars and students alike by opening a window to the rich cultural history of Yangzhou. The volume can serve as a textbook for courses on traditional and modern Chinese literature, popular culture, the city, or social history. It will be of great interest to scholars of East Asian studies, as well as to those in a variety of comparative fields, such as urban studies, theater studies, and gender studies.