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  • Chinese Storytellers: Life and Art in the Yangzhou Tradition
  • Peace Lee (bio)
Vibeke Børdhal and Jette Ross. Chinese Storytellers: Life and Art in the Yangzhou Tradition. Boston: Cheng and Tsui Company, 2002. xv, 404 pp. Paperback/VCD set $45.00, ISBN 0-88727-356-4.

This multimedia publication introduces the Yangzhou Pinghua tradition of Chinese storytelling from the city of Yangzhou. In clear and direct language, accompanied by numerous illustrations and detailed explanations, the authors engage both the general and the scholarly reader in not only the art of Yangzhou storytelling but also the history, places, and people involved in the development and transmission of this performance art. The text is divided into two main parts with subsections, and there is a CD-ROM featuring six of the performing artists introduced in the text. Each subcategory takes a historical look at different aspects of the Yangzhou tradition and guides the reader through the development of the art form. The CD-ROM offers rich "live" images and allows the reader to experience a Yangzhou storytelling event.

Chinese Storytellers begins with an introduction to this tradition in China, retracing some of its representative themes and forms by examining its history at different periods. The book then turns to a contextual description of historical and modern Yangzhou as a town and of how storytelling has fit into the pattern of daily life during these different historical periods. The book's portrait of life in Yangzhou, including photographs, includes vivid descriptions of the streets, private homes, teahouses, and some of the local cuisines, enticing readers to stroll through both the old and modern corners of the town. With these larger historical and social contexts in mind, the reader is then guided to the houses of the storytellers, where the actual storytelling takes place. The social customs and etiquette involved in listening and performance, along with other components of the storytelling event (such as the role of tea masters), are presented in detail.

In the section titled "Master and Transmission" the authors focus on the storytellers and the mode of transmission of stories between them. In some cases, several generations of a lineage are described for different schools of storytelling. Each school, with its own specialized repertoire and style, reflects the long history and professional training involved in the Yangzhou tradition. The subsequent section on "Telling the Tale" then focuses on "linguistic and extra-linguistic" elements and constructs a cultural-interpretative framework for understanding the performance itself. The authors' precise descriptions of the range of movements, voices, gestures, stage props (both traditional and modern) and their symbolic meanings, the sequencing of the storytelling, dialects, and techniques of narration may initially overwhelm the reader with all the specialized terms and explanations given. However, such detail is useful for grasping both the general and subtle aesthetics [End Page 376] of performance and drives home the point that Yangzhou storytelling is a highly developed art form.

One of the most interesting sections of the book describes the life stories of seven masters from different schools. These stories add a personal dimension to the facts and descriptions previously presented. The only weakness here is the exclusion of the latest generation of aspiring young Yangzhou story-tellers. The authors do indicate in the Preface that their intended focus was a select number of older master storytellers, but perhaps a brief note on some of today's younger masters (such as Ma Wei) could have shed some light on the question that is raised in the Introduction concerning the future direction of the storytelling tradition. Otherwise, this section is especially important for its recognition of the individual storytellers and their respective artistic contributions to the tradition—both as performers and transmitters. In the past, following the emphasis in some of the collected and transcribed works of the Chinese oral tradition, the life stories of artists, whether professional storytellers or local community tradition-bearers, were often regarded as not important or even irrelevant to the artistic performance. But the life stories of these storytellers show how their lives are interwoven with both the daily life and the narrative tradition of Yangzhou.

In the last section, three stories from the...

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