Project MUSE®: CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/771
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature.daily12026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 1 (1969) through current issue
Latest Articles: CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing LiteratureTWOProject MUSE®CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature2835-31882835-317XLatest articles in CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Introduction: Special Issue on Soundscapes of Twentieth-Century China
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978074
<p></p>
CHINOPERL authors and readers have long paid attention to the sonic dimensions of Chinese oral and performing literature. The oral in such literature, after all, implicitly presumes a listener who apprehends and is aurally engaged (or not) by the vocal and/or instrumental artistry of the performer. Much of this concern with the oral and aural component of performance was shaped by the precocious interdisciplinarity of the journal from its inception in 1969, which put into conversation scholarship on Chinese literature, performance, ethnomusicology, and history. But if the sounds of oral and performing literature in past issues of the journal have been frequently noted, their documentation has sometimes been more
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978080">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/771/image/coversmallIntroduction: Special Issue on Soundscapes of Twentieth-Century China2025-12-16text/htmlen-USIntroduction: Special Issue on Soundscapes of Twentieth-Century China2025-12-162025TWOProject MUSE®466992026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-12-16That Clarion Call: The Sounds and Meanings of Night Watchmen in China, ca. 1900–1940
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978075
<p></p>
The man in the picture, shouting with mouth wide open, is a night watchman featured in one of the few photographic images taken in Beijing in the 1860s (fig. 1). Based on what we know about night watching as a social practice, he might have been delivering a brief informative reminder such as, "be cautious with candles and fires."1 Yet, this vocal sound is not the only auditory element that can be discerned from this sonically rich image. A careful observation reveals a wooden block in his
Fig 1
Night watchman standing next to a wooden door. Photograph by John Thomson, ca. 1868. Wikimedia Commons, accessed July 2025, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_nightwatchman,_Peking,_by_John_Thomson,_1869.jpg.
[AI
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978080">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/771/image/coversmallThat Clarion Call: The Sounds and Meanings of Night Watchmen in China, ca. 1900–19402025-12-16text/htmlen-USThat Clarion Call: The Sounds and Meanings of Night Watchmen in China, ca. 1900–19402025-12-162025TWOProject MUSE®1411152026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-12-16The Stage Moves on Air: The Mediatization of Quyi in Early Twentieth-Century North China
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978076
<p></p>
"So you won't keep looking down on me, mocking me for performing xiangsheng with a garrulous and sharp tongue! See what I've done—I, Fang Liu, have made an appearance on the radio! When I start talking there, everyone in all of Beijing, and even those in the 'borderlands' of Tianjin, can hear me!"1"省得你老看不起我，貧嘴惡舌的說相聲！瞧吧，我方六也到廣播電台去露 了 臉！我在那兒一出聲，九城八條大街，連天津三不管，都聽得見！"This boast from a xiangsheng 相聲 (comedy routines) performer in Lao She's 老舍 (1899–1966) novel Four Generations under One Roof vividly captures the impact of broadcasting on quyi 曲藝 performances—various forms of storytelling, ballad singing, and comic routines—in early twentieth-century China. What was once a humble form of entertainment ascended to new
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978080">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/771/image/coversmallThe Stage Moves on Air: The Mediatization of Quyi in Early Twentieth-Century North China2025-12-16text/htmlen-USThe Stage Moves on Air: The Mediatization of Quyi in Early Twentieth-Century North China2025-12-162025TWOProject MUSE®1881892026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-12-16Revolutionary Resonance: "The East Is Red" from Rural Shaanxi to China's First Satellite
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978077
<p></p>
In her memoir, Rae Yang vividly recalls a time when one song set the tempo for an entire city during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). As the song was broadcast through loudspeakers across Beijing in the morning, "the whole college was drowned in this deafening music. Teachers, students, workers, their families, all were forced to wake up. Other colleges and universities in Beijing were pretty much the same." The song was "The East Is Red" ("Dongfang hong" 东方红), whose first line of lyrics, "The east is red, and the sun has risen" 东方红，太阳升, is perhaps suitable for waking up the whole city.1 As Yang continues to narrate, "When [the words] 'the east is red' [were sung in the song], everybody had to get up except a
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978080">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/771/image/coversmallRevolutionary Resonance: "The East Is Red" from Rural Shaanxi to China's First Satellite2025-12-16text/htmlen-USRevolutionary Resonance: "The East Is Red" from Rural Shaanxi to China's First Satellite2025-12-162025TWOProject MUSE®1258842026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-12-16Dueling and Converging Soundscapes in China and Korea
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978078
<p></p>
As a historian of twentieth-century Korea, I am drawn to the burgeoning subfield of Chinese sound studies, finding that it resonates with many of the approaches and themes scholars in Korean studies are pursuing. One of the most engaging aspects of a history of music and sonic culture more broadly is that it allows one to share, on a visceral level, a sensory experience with the individuals and communities one is documenting. Lingyan Liu's article, the first in this special issue, emphasizes this point quite compellingly by positioning sound as an "archival index for human emotion," stating that "attuning ourselves to the ways historical actors once listened, allows us to reconnect … with [their] emotional
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978080">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/771/image/coversmallDueling and Converging Soundscapes in China and Korea2025-12-16text/htmlen-USDueling and Converging Soundscapes in China and Korea2025-12-162025TWOProject MUSE®281352026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-12-16Muyu shu Collections in Libraries and Museums in the United States
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978079
<p></p>
Muyu shu 木魚書 (mukyu syu, "wooden-fish song") or muyu (mukyu), also called moyu ge 摸魚歌 (moyu go, "touching-fish song") in late imperial accounts, refers to a variety of Cantonese popular narratives that circulated in the Pearl River delta in South China and in Cantonese-speaking diasporic communities.1 In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly in Guangzhou, and later in Hong Kong and Macau, they formed an important part of the local soundscape and the aural memory of many inhabitants. Following in the footsteps of laborers and merchants from the delta, muyu shu, as both an oral tradition and in print, also circulated overseas.2 In the 1990s, muyu shu could still be heard on the streets of New
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978080">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/771/image/coversmallMuyu shu Collections in Libraries and Museums in the United States2025-12-16text/htmlen-USMuyu shu Collections in Libraries and Museums in the United States2025-12-162025TWOProject MUSE®1533302026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-12-16In Memory of Susan Blader (1943–2025)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978080
<p></p>
Born in New York City on October 4, 1943, Susan Blader received her higher education from the University of Pennsylvania, obtaining her B.A. (1965) and M.A. (1966) in Russian Language and Literature, and then her Ph.D. in Chinese Language and Literature (1977). After a year of teaching at Swarthmore College, she joined the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Languages and Literatures (currently Department of Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages) at Dartmouth College in 1978, where she taught Chinese language, literature, and culture until her retirement in 2016. Even after four decades of classroom teaching, she continued to dedicate her time and energy to editing manuscripts for students and colleagues. She
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978080">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/771/image/coversmallIn Memory of Susan Blader (1943–2025)2025-12-16text/htmlen-USIn Memory of Susan Blader (1943–2025)2025-12-162025TWOProject MUSE®93642026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-12-16