On an autumn evening beside an old pine and a pavilion, an elder plays a pipa while another reads from a script, listeners gathered on stools amid red leaves, a stone bridge and village behind.
Quyi is the family of performing arts built on speaking and singing, with few performers and simple props. Its more than three hundred forms include pingshu and pinghua storytelling, tanci and pingtan, drum songs such as jingyun dagu, clapper tales, qinshu, xiangsheng crosstalk and errenzhuan, staged in teahouses, story halls and temple fairs.
100 · OriginThe drumming storyteller figurine from an Eastern Han cliff tomb at Tianhuishan, Chengdu, drum under one arm and beater raised, laughing, is the earliest image of a storytelling performer.800 · EvolutionPopular sutra lectures arose in Tang monasteries, and the Dunhuang bianwen told stories in alternating verse and prose, shaping later tanci and drum ballads.1100 · EvolutionIn the wazi of Northern Song Bianjing, storytelling split into fiction, history and other schools, and professional storytellers appeared.1860 · ImpactXiangsheng took shape in Beijing in the Xianfeng and Tongzhi reigns, with performers such as Zhu Shaowen (Qiongbupa) at Tianqiao, completing the main lines of quyi.
Quyi and opera both tell stories, but in different ways. Opera actors become characters and act the story out on stage. Quyi performers mostly narrate in the third person, stepping into a character to speak or sing in its voice and then stepping out again to comment, a technique called 'jumping in and out.' One person can thus play a whole army, and the audience pictures the scene by listening.
Quyi falls into a few broad groups. Spoken forms, such as northern pingshu and southern pinghua, are mainly told and cover historical romances and heroic tales. Sung forms, such as jingyun dagu, meihua dagu, danxian and other drum songs, and the regional qinshu, are sung by performers who beat a drum and clappers or play a string instrument. Mixed forms such as Suzhou tanci have a man and a woman playing sanxian and pipa, alternately telling and singing. Clapper tales keep time with bamboo clappers and rattle off rhymed speech. Xiangsheng makes people laugh through talking, imitating, teasing and singing, and errenzhuan adds dance to speech and song.
Quyi can be staged almost anywhere: teahouses, story halls, temple fairs or an open patch of street. A long story often runs for months. Performers learn mostly by word of mouth from their masters, and each school has its own story outline, delivery and singing style. With the arrival of radio, pingshu and xiangsheng reached the whole country.
Today Suzhou pingtan, Yangzhou pinghua, jingyun dagu, xiangsheng, Shandong kuaishu, northeastern errenzhuan and others are on the national intangible heritage list, and there are still many performances in story halls, theatres and on online platforms.
Quyi is the family of performing arts built on speaking and singing. One or a few performers, with a table and chair, a fan, a wooden clapper or a single instrument, can tell a long story or sing out a feeling. It includes pingshu and pinghua storytelling, tanci and pingtan, drum songs such as jingyun dagu, clapper tales, qinshu, xiangsheng and errenzhuan, with more than three hundred forms across the country. The name quyi came into general use only after 1949; before that these arts were usually called shuochang, 'telling and singing.'
The earliest text in this line is the Chengxiang chapter of the late Warring States Xunzi. A xiang was a tool for beating time while pounding grain; the Chengxiang imitates folk chanting to that beat, mixing speech and song, and is often regarded as the distant ancestor of storytelling in verse. The Han dynastic history also lists eleven pieces of Chengxiang miscellany, now lost. Eastern Han figurines of drum-beating storytellers found in Chengdu and elsewhere show the jesters of the time telling, singing and clowning.
Tang monasteries held popular lectures in which monks explained the sutras in plain language and told stories in speech and song. The bianwen found at Dunhuang in the early twentieth century alternate prose narration with sung verse; they are the earliest surviving mature texts of the kind and influenced the later zhugongdiao, tanci and drum ballads. The Tang also had shuohua storytelling: Yuan Zhen once heard the tale of Yizhihua told at his house in Xinchang ward.
In the Song, the wazi and goulan entertainment quarters grew up in the cities, and storytelling became a profession, divided into schools such as fiction, history and sutra tales; the prompt-books became the source of later vernacular fiction. In the Northern Song, Kong Sanzhuan created the zhugongdiao, linking tunes in many modes to tell long stories in speech and song; in the south there were taozhen and other sung narratives. Cihua appeared around the Yuan and Ming, tanci spread in Jiangnan in the Ming, and late in the Ming Liu Jingting was famous as a storyteller.
The Qing is when most quyi forms took shape. Suzhou tanci and pinghua together became pingtan, and Yangzhou pinghua and Beijing pingshu formed their own schools; northern drum ballads gave rise to jingyun dagu, xihe dagu and other drum songs, and Manchu bannermen wrote zidishu; Shandong kuaishu, regional qinshu and northeastern errenzhuan followed. In the Xianfeng and Tongzhi reigns xiangsheng appeared at Tianqiao in Beijing, and Zhu Shaowen, known as Qiongbupa, is counted among its founders.
In the twentieth century Liu Baoquan made jingyun dagu the rage of Beijing and Tianjin, and radio carried pingshu and xiangsheng into every home. After 1949 quyi became the umbrella name for these arts, the China Quyi Artists Association was founded, and quyi troupes and story halls spread through town and country. Today many of the more than three hundred forms are on the national intangible heritage list and are still performed in story halls, theatres and online.
Sanxian Ballad Singer
The performer holding a sanxian and a text at center is the clearest main figure of the ballad-singing scene.
Pavilion Audience
The seated listeners in the left pavilion show the tea-pavilion environment of oral ballad performance.
Stone Bridge Market
The stone bridge and riverside shops at right provide the typical marketplace backdrop for oral storytelling.
Listening Literati
The literati gathered around the singer with scrolls in hand show oral literature interwoven with written tradition.
A tanci storytelling session: a blind musician chants epic tales to the sanxian lute while a pipa player joins in, and listeners sit in a ring, passing long narratives through song. Evoking massive visual armies with only a single stringed pipa, table, and storyteller.
Quyi is like a lamp you carry with you. Opera needs a stage, make-up and a band; for quyi, one person sits behind a table, strikes the wooden clapper, and the lamp is lit. The rivers, warhorses and heroes of the story are lit up in the listeners' minds by the voice alone.
The lamp is small but travels far: it has been to teahouses, temple fairs and fields, and into radios and phones.
In an old teahouse in Yangzhou, a storyteller opens his story every afternoon. In front of him are only a table, a fan and a wooden clapper.
A visitor from out of town sat there for a while and asked an old regular, "He just sits there talking. What's so good about it?"
"Close your eyes and listen."
The visitor closed his eyes. The storyteller had reached Wu Song fighting the tiger: first the wind, then the tiger's roar, then Wu Song's fists coming down blow after blow. At the crucial moment he struck the clapper, the room fell silent, and he said, "To learn what happened next, listen to the next instalment."
The visitor opened his eyes and found his palms were sweating. "When is the next instalment?"
The old regular laughed. "Tomorrow afternoon, as usual."
Quyi is built on speaking and singing, with few performers and simple props. The drummer-storyteller figurine from the Eastern Han cliff tomb at Tianhui Mountain in Chengdu is an early image of such a performer; temple lectures rose in the Tang, and the Dunhuang bianwen told stories in alternating verse and prose; in the entertainment quarters of Northern Song Bianjing there were professional storytellers; and xiangsheng took shape in Beijing in the Xianfeng and Tongzhi years of the Qing. With only a few people and simple props, the performers let listeners see the scenes of the story in their imagination. (This is an illustrative story, not a historical account.)
Daoqing and Yugu Fish-Drum BalladsBallads sung to a bamboo fish drum and clapper slips, grown from Daoist song
Pingshu and Pinghua StorytellingOne table, one chair, a gavel block and a fan: long tales told in speech
Drum-Ballad Storytelling (Gushu)Long tales sung to drum, clappers and strings: the regional dagu and guci
Suzhou PingtanWu-dialect storytelling: pinghua spoken, tanci sung to sanxian and pipa
Shidiao and Xiaoqu (Ditty Songs)Regional art songs sung to clappers and plucked strings, from Ming–Qing popular tunes
Cantonese Yuequ and NaamyamCantonese sung narrative: yuequ, Guangfu naamyam, muyu songs and dragon-boat songs
Qinshu (Dulcimer Ballads)Seated performers sing story ballads to their own yangqin and fiddles
ErrenzhuanThe Northeast's sung-and-danced duet of a dan and a chou, with fans and handkerchiefs
Danxian and Paiziqu (Linked-Tune Ballads)Ballads sung as suites of linked tunes, led by Beijing's danxian
Kuaishu and Kuaiban (Clapper Recitation)Rhymed storytelling chanted at speed over the clatter of bamboo clappers
Xiangsheng (Crosstalk)Telling, mimicking, teasing and singing: the comic word-play of Beijing and Tianjin
Jingyun Dagu (Beijing Drum Ballad)Short drum ballads sung standing at the drum in Beijing speech