Jade Hibiscus

Introduction

One of the thirteen suites still kept by the Qujiaying music association, handed down in gongche notation

Jade Hibiscus is a suite for sheng and guan ensemble handed down by the music association of Qujiaying village in Gu'an County, Hebei. The association's music is said to derive from Buddhist temple music of the late Yuan and early Ming, it is played mainly at sacrifices and funerals, and in 2006 it entered the first national list of intangible heritage as a branch of Jizhong sheng-guan music. The group keeps thirteen suites, this one among them, together with seven large-beat pieces, more than twenty short pieces and a set of percussion music. The music is written in gongche notation and taught by ear and memory, on guan, flutes, sheng and the yunluo gong chime, and the ensemble is fixed at twenty-four players for a full band or twelve for a half band. Hu Guoqing, chairman of the association and a national representative bearer, lists Jade Hibiscus among his representative pieces. A piece of the same name is also among the seventy-odd scores that elderly players of Baimiao village in Daxing, Beijing, wrote down again from memory.