Du Shiniang

Introduction

A long danxian ballad that Rong Jianchen expanded from two parts to five and recorded in the 1930s

Du Shiniang is one of the representative pieces of danxian paiziqu, the Beijing ballad sung to a chain of named tunes, and its story comes from the thirty-second tale of Feng Menglong's Ming collection Stories to Caution the World. In that tale the courtesan Du Shiniang hopes to leave her old life and marry Li Jia, but he sells her to the salt merchant Sun Fu for a thousand taels, and she throws her jewel box into the river before them all and drowns herself. The Beijing danxian singer Rong Jianchen reworked the ballad from two parts into five, and audiences gradually took it to heart. Rong, born in 1881 or 1886, became a disciple of Ming Yongshun in 1901, founded the Rong school with his smooth and mellow singing, and was called the king of danxian. In the 1930s he recorded Du Shiniang among his three discs. When danxian paiziqu from Tianjin entered the fifth national list of intangible cultural heritage in 2021, Du Shiniang was named among its representative works.