Author
Abstract
This article first describes the distinctive characteristics of Jinhua daoqing, a shuo-chang (speak-sing) genre, traditionally performed by blind male practitioners (with yugu drum and clappers) on urban streets and in teahouses, in village squares and at temple fairs, weaving together traditional folk tales and stories, with commentary on more recent and local events. As a result, daoqing was often called ‘Singing the News’ (chang xinwen), a kind of minstrelsy, with a communication as well as an entertainment function. The article moves on to present the genre’s historical narrative, which stretches from its supposed origins with Daoist Immortal Zhang Guolao, through the Republican period (1911–49), when it was exceeded in popularity in Jinhua only by the local opera. Practitioners of daoqing survived into the Communist period (1949–present), and some achieved considerable renown prior to the Cultural Revolution (1966–78), by tailoring their messages to the circumstances of the ‘new society’. Despite suppression during the Cultural Revolution, ‘underground’ performances were said to have been held, and during the early period of economic reform, the genre experienced a vibrant revival. Daoqing performers came out of the backrooms to perform in public once again, and local cultural offices held classes to train up a new generation of ‘sighted’ performers. But the genre faces new challenges in the world of expanding and globalizing media, and may not survive another generation. This article concludes by placing daoqing performers alongside the musings of Walter Benjamin (1955) about storytellers as communicators in an ‘artisan mode of production’, increasingly eclipsed and superseded, nay, overwhelmed by new forms of media and multimedia.
Suggested Citation
Cooper, Eugene, 2015.
"Chinese minstrelsy: The popular cultural performance art of Jinhua daoqing,"
SocArXiv
fqens, Center for Open Science.
Handle:
RePEc:osf:socarx:fqens
DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/fqens
Download full text from publisher
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:fqens. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arabixiv.org .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.