Chinese Folk Songs and Folk Singers: Shan'ge Traditions in Southern Jiangsu

Abstract

"Chinese Folk Songs and Folk Singers: Shan'ge Traditions in Southern Jiangsu" by Antoinet Schimmelpenninck is reviewed.

SCHIMMELPENNINCK, ANTOINET. Chinese Folk Songs and Folk Singers: Shan'ge Traditions in Southern Jiangsu. Leiden: CHIME Foundation, 1997. xvi + 442 pages. Illustrations, musical notations, appendices, bibliography, glossary, index, CD. Paper, n.p.; ISBN 90-803615-1-8.

The present volume, based on the author's Ph.D. thesis presented at Leiden University, is a study on the state of shange singing in Jiangnan, southern Jiangsu Province. The author, a sinologist and musicologist, presents here the rich material she collected with her husband Frank Kouwenhoven in the villages of Jiangnan during her frequent visits from 1986 to 1992. Under the impact of China's sweeping process of modernization, all the folk traditions of this region are in rapid decay, so this work can be seen as an abundant lastminute harvest.

The author interlaces her vivid descriptions of span ge singing and singers with personal experiences and adventures encountered during her fieldwork. The span ge of Jiangnan are famous all over China for their lyrical and romantic touch. However, when mentioning them one might also meet with some resentment and aversion among Chinese. Some shan ge are in fact disliked by many Chinese (not only Communist purists) as being rude and vulgar because of their openly sexual allusions. Any foreigner who wants to study shah ge of Jiangnan will therefore meet with a lot of embarrassment on the side of the Chinese who feel ashamed that China still preserves such primitive and crude things. Much of the difficulties and obstacles the author encountered during her fieldwork seem to have been caused by the clash of a liberal, unprejudiced, "objective" Western scholar's mind with the uneasiness (bu hao yisi of the Chinese who had to deal with a curious intruder doing fieldwork on sensitive matters.

Nevertheless, nowadays there are studies on sexual symbolism and allusions in folklore also in China. Compared with the situation in Germany, for example, where purified editions of the Grimm Brothers' Hausmarchen have dominated the folkloristic scene for more than a century, China's situation is not so bad at all. According to Chinese aesthetic standards, folklore should be cleansed of crude elements and the improved product presented to the public for enjoyment and as a moral model. Yet such standards are not a peculiarity of China, they are also found in other Asian and Western countries.

It should also be mentioned that since the end of the "Cultural Revolution" there has been a significant amount of folklore materials collected and researched in China that is difficult to imagine for Western specialists and remains widely unknown.

Shange are usually classified as one category of Chinese folk songs besides haozi and xiaodiao. A more learned expression of the shah ge of Jiangnan is Wuge "songs of Wu." The origin of the term shah ge is still not clear, but the term is widespread and can be found as early as the time of Bo Juyi (772-846), the famous Tang poet. We think that it should not be taken too literally as "mountain songs." What matters here is the Chinese connotation of mountains as places of wildness and rudeness. It should not be forgotten that Han Chinese settlers in southern China preferred to occupy the plains, thus resulting in the indigenous population having to continue their traditional life in mountainous areas.

The author briefly introduces Jiangnan's geography, history, and population (25-27). One may, perhaps, add that during the last two decades Chinese folklorists and cultural anthropologists have eagerly been clarifying the contours of a so-called Wu-Yue local culture from antiquity to modern times. A stimulus for such research has been the discovery of several archeological sites in the region (i.e., in Jiangsu and Zhejiang). These sites have allowed us to trace rice cultivation back to more than 7000 years ago, and, as a result, the region is now considered to be the second hearth of the origin of Chinese culture beside the one in the Huanghe Valley.

The author asserts that the term shan ge is not known among the minorities of southern China (21). We are not so confident. A famous Miao m song in Guizhou , for instance, is named after its last line as span ge wu ben ju ju zhen "shange are without booklet, each sentence is true." This song is also known among minorities of Yunnan. It is possible, of course, that in each of these cases the term was borrowed from the Han Chinese.

The bulk of shan ge are love songs. They are treated in detail by the author (144-78). As a rule they reflect the siqing, the "private, secret love," of a girl that is not in accordance with the prescribed marriage arrangements made by her parents. Some Chinese folklorists of the 1920s found these love songs to be of much interest as an expression of rebellion against Confucian norms. The author finds that such "private love relationships must lead to distress or even total ruin" (174).

In an even broader cultural setting, we find the same theme also in long narrative songs that are dealt with only occasionally and in a few lines in this book. The author puts them in a separate category as "historical and narrative songs" though the historical songs are, in fact, also narrative songs. Some tell of historical or pseudo-historical figures, others are myths or Marchen.

The author mentions also other categories of shah ge and Wu songs: namely, work songs, cursing songs/vulgar songs, wedding and funeral songs, cradle songs, festival songs, peddler's songs, songs about singing, riddle songs and nonsense rhymes, songs listing historical or legendary names, songs about social problems, songs about local products or local scenery, and political propaganda songs (178-86). Unlike the love songs, all of these groups are treated very briefly. At least the sukuuge, "songs of complaints about hardships," as they are called in the famous anthology Wuge (Wu Songs)(Beijing, 1984), tell us a lot about the life of peasants and fishermen, and thus deserve more room than just one and a quarter pages (182-83).

In the section on style, the author briefly mentions puns and homonyms (205). One would expect a few words more on this topic. Puns are often called shuangguanyu, "ambiguous words." They are frequent in Wu songs and are often found in Chinese editions. As the songs are sung in Wu dialects, they are hardly intelligible without the help of a native speaker. In the author's collection of songs we find only one single song (334, no. 61) where the author points out the shuangguanyu (cf also 205).

Besides the shuangguanyu, the xiehouyu (expressions with omissible ends) and yanyu (proverbs), particularly the nongyang (peasants' proverbs), should be mentioned. All these forms are not only rich in sexual allusions, they are also, we believe, often the reason for comical and humorous effects. With the help of stylistic devices of this kind, experienced singers like Qian Afu let off a true fireworks of wit and humor. That is why singers of shange, with their unlimited resourcefulness in regards to using allusions and words with more than one meaning, appear to us to be a bit like clowns and tricksters.

The author applies the Lord-Parry theory of formulaic speech to the short Wu songs (206-22). This may be surprising because this theory has been developed in connection with very long epic songs. Whether or not set expressions or fixed phrases in Wu songs have a mnemonic function may be worthy of further discussion; they do, however, provide a traditional framework into which all sorts of improvised elements can be inserted.

Whole chapters are devoted to the singers (chapter 3) and to the music (chapter 5), especially to the puzzling question of monothematism (i.e., the phenomenon that in a certain region only one tune is used for all songs although variants can be found in different villages or with individual singers). The author offers several theories and plausible solutions but refrains from making a final decision. We believe that this phenomenon can be found in many parts of the world and that a solution to the problem it poses can be found only in a large context. For example, in the case of the Ewenki and Nanai of Siberia, the phenomenon is usually explained as being related to clans or clan groups.

This book is first of all a study of songs, but their language, the Wu dialects, is also a problem to be considered. The author introduces numerous songs in dialect form (229-323 and elsewhere). She says that she used "pinyin transcription (with some slight adaptations in order to represent dialect pronunciations)" (228). The phonemic systems of the Wu dialects, however, differ widely from that of the standard language (putonghua). One wonders, therefore, whether the problem can be solved simply by some "slight adaptations." In Appendix Seven the author provides a list of corresponding sounds for the dialect transcriptions, but her descriptions are rather vague. Here are some examples from the list: "ch as in English hell,... -eei as in Chinese [!] hei,... -u as in Chinese bu, -ou as in Chinese bu, -iu as in Chinese bu, o as in Chinese bo" (397). Other examples are found in the transcription, such as e and -ei, but their pronunciation is not described. Neither are we told what the underlining of -u, -ou, -iu and o means. There are a few more examples in the list we did not mention, but the question remains whether the list suffices to cover the peculiarities of the Wu dialects.

Rendering of the frequent glottal stop is another problem. Does the author solve it by using -h or-k as, for instance, in zok (340, song 70b, last line)? Since -p, -t, and -k do not occur in Wu dialects, the use of such letters must have another function, but we are not told what this might be. Or does the glottal stop go mostly unmarked? Nasalization, frequent in Wu dialects, also seems to remain unmarked by the author. And how does she differentiate between e, a, and v, or account for syllabic rm, y and pg? As there is no phonemic vowel length, one wonders what the difference between tsi and toi, or kei and keel could possibly mean. Although there are three series of three stops in each of these dialects as in Middle Chinese (e.g., b, p, ph; dt, th) the author only gives two transcriptions as in putonghua (e.g., b and p, d and t). All these features are not without significance since they are phonemic and, therefore, cause different meanings. The same can be said about tones whose number varies between five and eight in Wu dialects. The author investigates the correlation between tones and melodic contour in Wu shan ge applying detailed measurements (Appendix 10, 404-10).

In a list of frequently used dialect words in Wu songs (Appendix 8, 398), the word ta is mentioned as a "particle" but no meaning is given. A frequent meaning, though, of this word (toy) is "together with"; when it comes after a word, it may mean "at" or "in"; depending on the context it may have a total of twelve meanings. Furthermore, le is said to mean "from, in, on (sometimes functions as Mandarin le)," but the demonstrative "this" is another frequent meaning of this word (h'). Another particle that appears very frequently, especially in the long, narrative texts, should be added to this list: 3 mis. It is comparable with the a of putonghua that often suggests a slight pause but sometimes means "if"

A few important titles could be added to the bibliography. TIAN Ying (1985) is a collection of articles on Wu songs and Chinese folk songs in general by Jiang Bin (Tian Ying) who is probably the most prolific writer on Wu songs and traditional Wu culture. Wuge, the well-known first comprehensive anthology of Wu songs appearing after the "Cultural Revolution" in the series "Collection of works on China's songs" (Zhongguo geyao congshu , 1984), seems to have been forgotten in the bibliography, although, strangely enough, two articles from this book are mentioned. This work is not only highly noteworthy for its collection of songs and excellent articles, such as those of Jiang Bin and Li Ning but also because it contains a complete bibliography of Wu song collections and related research up to 1984. It is further regrettable that, with a single exception, Jiang Bin's articles written after 1985 are missing. All of the studies by (Qian) Shunjuan, the famous collector, enthusiast and researcher of Wu songs, are also missing, as are some of the articles published by Wang Fang VA (Wang Wenhua ).

The points mentioned above do not, however, diminish the high quality of this study in general, although it may be improved in a second edition. Anyone interested in Chinese folk songs will find here a wealth of material together with extensive as well as very thoughtful and highly empirical research that has opened our eyes to a little-known and neglected section of Chinese culture.

Jorg BACKER

Bonn

References

REFERENCE CITED

TIAN Ying

1985 Lun Wuge ji qita (On Wu songs and other related subjects). Shanghai