Zhonghua Liuban

Introduction

The most important elaboration of the old tune Lao Liuban, also known as the Warm Breeze Tune.

Zhonghua Liuban, also called the Warm Breeze Tune, is one of the Eight Great Pieces of Jiangnan sizhu, and its name means a moderately ornamented version of Liuban. It grew from the old tune Lao Liuban, also called Lao Baban, and is regarded as the most important of the many pieces derived from it. Jin Zuli noted that Liuban exists in six variants of different speeds while keeping the same frame of sixty beats, and that Li Fangyuan's pipa collection of 1895 retitled it the Warm Breeze Tune of Emperor Shun. The Zhejiang Vocational Academy of Art likewise traces Zhonghua Liuban to Li Fangyuan's collection. In the 1930s Ren Huichu arranged it, together with Sanliu, as a yangqin solo and recorded it.