In Memorium, Gao Zaihua (1929–2009)

IN MEMORIUM, GAO ZAIHUA (1929-2009) Photo: Jette Ross, 2000. On 26 March, 2009, the Yangzhou storyteller Gao Zaihua 高再華 passed away. He was one of the outstanding transmitters of the Three Kingdoms’ repertoire as handed down from the Kang school of Yangzhou storytelling. A man of humble and unpretentious manners, he embodied the serious and fervent, yet humorous and lively attitude of a true master of storytelling. He was active as a performer during his whole life and also took great responsibility for the milieu of storytelling in Yangzhou, as well as for the training of young people to carry on the tradition. The full-length repertoire of Gao Zaihua performing from Three Kingdoms, altogether 110 hours of storytelling, can be found on videos in the project “Large-Scale Registration of Chinese Storytelling” (cf., Asian Folklore CHINOPERL Papers No. 28 (2008-2009)©2009 by the Conference on Chinese Oral and Performing Literature CHINOPERL Papers No. 28 Studies 61.1 [2002]: 172-175), and are now available for research in the Library of Congress, Washington D.C.; Library of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing; Fu Ssu-nien Library of Academia Sinica, Taibei; and Danish Folklore Archives, Copenhagen. A catalogue for the collection was published in Four Masters of Chinese Storytelling: Full-length Repertoires of Yangzhou Storytelling on Video, ed. by Vibeke Børdahl, Fei Li and Huang Ying, bilingual edition in English and Chinese, with CD (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2004). As a matter of fact, there is no such thing as a ‘full-length’ repertoire of a Yangzhou storyteller. There is always more. The masters can tell their saga in daily sessions for several years without coming to an end, and next time they tell it, it will be different. Transmitting, creating, recreating and transmitting again, this is the string of life for this art. Only when a great master passes away, do we come to the end. The end of a living voice, the end of a sound of wisdom from the past and present. With sorrow and gratitude, Vibeke Børdahl Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Copenhagen PS: So that you may hear something of Gao speaking in his own voice, even if somewhat mediated, I append below a piece in which he speaks of his life, training, and art. 102 Børdahl, In Memoriam Gao Zaihua HOW I STUDIED THE ART OF STORYTELLING Told by Gao Zaihua, English Version by Vibeke Børdahl1 My father was a barber. He loved storytelling [pinghua 評話]. At the age of eleven or twelve I often accompanied my father to the storyteller’s house to listen to pinghua. At that time we listened more often to chivalric storytelling . Three Kingdoms and Water Margin were beyond my understanding, but little by little my knowledge grew and I was accustomed to listening. I was crippled at four, and this made me understand at an early age how important it was to learn something. Or else, as a cripple I would have no way to support myself after the death of my parents. From the age of seven I attended an old-style private school [sishu 私塾], cheaper than the other schools. We had the usual curriculum of the Three Character Classic, the Hundred Clan Names, the Thousand Character Text, the Great Learning, the Golden Mean, the Analects, Mencius, etc. At the age of sixteen, when I left school, my father asked me what kind of profession I would like, and I told him I would love to become a storyteller. My father did not agree. He knew many people in this trade, and he told me that if I were successful, fine, but if not, I might end up as a beggar. He advised me to become a doctor of Chinese medicine, or a tailor, or a cobbler, but he was definitely against me becoming a storyteller. I told him that I did not want to study anything else but storytelling. I was the only son, and my father loved me very dearly, so he gave in halfway. He gave me money to go and listen to storytelling every day, and when I returned, I had to retell the 1 This autobiographical sketch was...