Ashima

Name of China's national intangible cultural heritage: Ashima

Applicant: Shilin Yi Autonomous County, Yunnan Province

Item No.: 28

Project No.: i-28

Time of publication: 2006 (the first batch)

Category: Folk Literature

Region: Yunnan Province

Type: new item

Applicant: Shilin Yi Autonomous County, Yunnan Province

Protection unit: Shilin Yi Autonomous County Cultural Center

About Ashima:

Applicant: Shilin Yi Autonomous County, Yunnan Province

Ashima is a long narrative poem of Sani people of Yi branch in Shilin Yi Autonomous County, Yunnan Province. It uses oral poetic language to tell or sing the story of Ashima. The story of Ashima's indomitable struggle against powerful forces reveals the human ideal that light will replace darkness, good and beautiful will replace ugliness, freedom will replace oppression and imprisonment, and reflects the national character and spirit of the Sani people of Yi nationality.

The original form of Ashima is created in Sani Yi language, which is the collective wisdom crystallization of Sani people after a lot of tempering, and has a wide range of mass. It is mainly spread in the Sani inhabited area of the Yi nationality in Shilin Yi Autonomous County of Yunnan Province, and it is divided into two schools which are similar in North and south. Ashima is sung in five character sentences, in which foreshadowing, exaggeration, satire, homophony, thimble, nianlian, metaphor and other techniques are used. The content and form are perfectly unified. As a narrative poem, it can be narrated or sung. The singing modes include "happy", "old man", "sad", "crying" and "scolding". There are no fixed occasions for singing. It can be sung and narrated in different occasions such as marriage, sacrifice, funeral, labor and life.

Ashima has been translated into English, France, Germany, Spain, Russia, Japan, South Korea and other languages since it was published in Chinese in relevant journals in the early 1950s. It has spread abroad, and has been adapted into radio drama, song and dance drama, children's drama and other art forms in Japan. In China, "Ashima" has been adapted into a film and performed in Beijing opera, Yunnan opera, opera, dance drama, Sani opera, etc. China's first color wide screen stereo music song and dance film "Ashima" won the first international music and dance film award in Santander, Spain in 1982.

With the change of lifestyle, education system and social space of minority language use, the inheritance of Ashima is facing a crisis.