Siping Opera

Name of Chinese national intangible cultural heritage: Siping Opera

Applicant: Pingnan County, Fujian Province

Project No.: 155

Project No.: Ⅳ - 11

Time of publication: 2006 (the first batch)

Category: Traditional Drama

Region: Fujian Province

Type: new item

Applicant: Pingnan County, Fujian Province

Protection unit: Pingnan Longtan Siping opera company

Introduction to Siping Opera:

Applicant: Pingnan County, Fujian Province

Siping opera, also known as Siping opera, Siping opera, Sipeng opera and Sipeng opera, evolved from Yiyang opera, one of the four popular tunes in the middle of Ming Dynasty. It was popular in Huizhou (Shexian County, Anhui Province) during the Jiajing period. It was introduced into Zhenghe in the mountains of northeast Fujian in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, and has continued to this day in Yangyuan township of Zhenghe County and Longtan Township of Pingnan County.

The traditional repertoire of Siping opera includes Jing Chai Ji, Bai Tu Ji, Bai Yue Ting Ji, Sha Gou Ji, Pipa Ji, Su Qin, hero club, Jiulong Pavilion, Chen Shimei, Lu Lin club, Bagua Tu, etc. Its singing is a high pitched system, simple and extensive, fresh and pleasant, elegant and beautiful, and it is sung with a drag tone at the end of the sentence. Daobai uses a kind of "Local Mandarin" between Putonghua and local dialect, commonly known as "Zhengzi". The remaining Siping plays only mark the light and heavy notes, but not the singing notes. The singing notes are completely handed down orally from generation to generation. In the Yongzheng period of the Qing Dynasty, his roles were quite complete. In the performance, Sheng Jiao emphasized elegance, Dan Jiao exquisite, Jing Jiao rough and clown funny, which formed the unique performance style of Siping opera. The performing movements of the characters are Teng, move, roll, hit, etc. they advance and retreat with the drum. The hand and foot movements of different characters all have the prescribed formula. In the performance, drums, cymbals, bangu and other percussion instruments are used as the background, while drums are used as the leading accompaniment form, which inherits the ancient tradition of Yiyang tune that "one person becomes the voice and all people are in harmony". Siping opera well retains the vocal art form of Ming Dynasty, which is called "living fossil of Chinese drama" by drama history experts. Because it is located in the deep mountain with backward conditions, its survival is full of hardships. Under the impact of the economic tide, there are serious problems in the inheritance of this ancient drama, so we must take measures to rescue it as soon as possible.