By Chen Zai, Yichang International Communication Studio
Qin Xianju, a 70-year-old farmer from Yuxiakou Town, Changyang Tujia Autonomous County, Yichang City, was not willing to resign herself to seeing an ancient folk music art die out. After five years of unstinting work, her “Selection of Changyang Yuxiakou Folk Songs” collection has been published.
Qin Xianju with copies of “Selection of Changyang Yuxiakou Folk Songs” and her Intangible Cultural Inheritor certificate.
The book includes the lyrics and music scores for more than 90 “Huaguzi” songs, a local Tujia performance art for joyous occasions. This complete and systematic recording of Huaguzi, an intangible cultural heritage that was on the verge of being lost, represents a very significant contribution to local cultural preservation work.
Cover of “Selection of Changyang Yuxiakou Folk Songs”
"Huaguzi", which first emerged during the Southern Song Dynasty (1127 - 1279), have been performed by Tujia people in Changyang County for eight hundred years. Men and women twirl handkerchiefs as they sing and dance to a rhythmic beat. The symmetrical movements and the lyrics express love between men and women. These performances typically occurred on festive days, to express joy and confer blessings, but can also be sung in the fields as a way of encouraging each other and relieving fatigue.
Watch a Huguzi song and dance performance.
As far as Qin Xianju can remember, for celebrations such as welcoming a new bride, the birth of a child, or an elderly person’s birthday celebration, adults would gather to sing and dance to "Huaguzi" songs. The performances often lasted a whole night, with people singing playful, sometimes hilarious lyrics, and dancing with light and graceful steps. The performances would create a lively, carnival atmosphere in the village. When Qin was a teenager, her talent for singing and dancing made her a rising star in the art of "Huaguzi".
However, from about the end of the 1960s, "Huaguzi" began to slowly fade out of people's lives. Forced by family issues to become a fulltime farmer, Qin herself was no longer an active "Huaguzi" performer.
In 2009, "Huaguzi" was included on the Hubei Provincial Intangible Cultural Heritage List but few people knew how to sing a complete "Huaguzi" anymore. Qin saw that, like her, her fellow villagers missed "Huaguzi" on celebratory occasions.
In 2017, she began to collect and record “Huaguzi” songs that were on the verge of extinction. She visited old singers in the surrounding areas and recorded more than 300 "Huaguzi" songs.
"Recording was just the first step. Most of the old singers were illiterate, they could only sing the words. I had to figure out the text based on the sound recording, and then check and revise the text. It was a huge amount of work," Qin said.
Luckily for her, her two children were very supportive, typing a manuscript of more than 130,000 characters into a computer.
To make full recordings of these folk songs, their musical scores had to be written down. Qin contacted professors from the Hangzhou Conservatory of Music and asked them to write scores for each song based on her recordings.
After five years of painstaking efforts and after spending 70,000 yuan (US$10,070) from her personal savings, Qin finally got her book "Selection of Changyang Yuxiakou Folk Songs" published. It enshrines her seven-decade love for the traditional local Tujia culture in which she was raised. Hopefully, it will lead to a revival of "Huaguzi" songs and dances.
