A stage performance of Yuexi gaoqiang (岳西高腔), a rare form of local opera (difang xiqu, 地方戏曲) from Yuexi County (岳西县), northwestern Anqing (安庆市), southwestern Anhui province, eastern China, in the area of the Dabie Mountains (Dabie Shan, 大别山). The story performed here is entitled "Long Nü Xiao Du"《龙女小度》. The singing is accompanied only by percussion instruments.
Performed by the Anhui Province Yuexi County Theater Troupe (安徽省岳西县剧团) of Yuexi County (岳西县), northwestern Anqing (安庆市), southwestern Anhui province, eastern China, April 2005.
The story may be summarized as follows (thanks to Mr. Gregory Dubinsky for sharing this summary):
This is the Buddhist story of the Dragon Daughter (Chinese: Long Nü, 龙女), an acolyte of the bodhisattva Guanyin, who has descended from the heavens to test the faith and purity of a Buddhist monk. She flirts with him and offers all sorts of temptations, which he piously refuses. In the end, he tries to expel the evil thoughts from her mind, whereupon she reveals herself in her true form and tells him that she was merely testing him.
Yuexi gaoqiang has a history of over 300 years, originating in the late Ming Dynasty when a singing style called Qingyang qiang (青阳腔) was introduced to Yuexi from Qingyang County (青阳县), Chizhou (池州市), southern Anhui province, and adopted by the literati there. Qingyang qiang swept the world of drama and became extremely popular during the Ming and Qing dynasties. It was especially favored by enthusiastic amateurs, including educated people and civil servants, who often performed it on village stages as one of the entertainments for lantern festivals (denghui, 灯会). In the late Qing Dynasty its popularity began to be eclipsed by newer forms of theater including Anqing tanqiang (安庆弹腔, also known as Hui diao, 徽调, the basis for today's Huiju, 徽剧) and Huangmei xi (黄梅戏). Qingyang qiang has had a significant influence on numerous later forms of local opera, including Huiju (徽剧, from Anhui), Xiangju (湘剧, from Hunan), Ganju (赣剧, from Jiangxi), hua gu xi (花鼓戏), cai cha xi (采茶戏), and Huangmei xi (黄梅戏).
Qingyang qiang inherited its style from the earlier traditions of Yuyao qiang (余姚腔) and Yiyang qiang (弋阳腔), two of the four major singing styles which were popularly used in local opera forms in the eastern Chinese provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang (in the case of Yuyao qiang) and Jiangxi (in the case of Yiyang qiang) during the late Ming Dynasty. The name "Yuexi gaoqiang" was coined to refer to Yuexi's version of Qingyang qiang in the 1950s, with "gaoqiang" (literally "high tune") referring to its use of high-pitched falsetto singing, in contrast to the lower-pitched style of Kunqu singing, which was sometimes described as "diqiang" (低腔, literally "low tune").
In 2006 the tradition of Yuexi gaoqiang, centering on Yuexi County (岳西县), northwestern Anqing (安庆市), southwestern Anhui province, eastern China, was included in the first batch of 518 traditions inscribed in the National List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of China (第一批国家级非物质文化遗产名录) by China's Ministry of Culture (中华人民共和国文化部, known since March 2018 as the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, 中华人民共和国文化和旅游部). The sub-agencies responsible for maintaining these lists, both under the aegis of the aforementioned ministry, are the Department of Intangible Cultural Heritage (文化部非物质文化遗产司) and the China Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center (中国非物质文化遗产保护中心, CICHPC).
In 2010 the Yuexi Gaoqiang Heritage Center (岳西高腔传承中心) was established in Yuexi County, and this is its website:
http://www.zgyxgq.org.cn/
http://www.zgyxgq.org.cn/2017/aboutgq...
安徽地方戏曲岳西高腔《龙女小度》国家级非物质文化遗产项目
More information:
https://cn.hujiang.com/new/p488017/
https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%B2%B...
http://www.zgyxgq.org.cn/2017/aboutgq...
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