Qiao Yangwen (standing) instructs students on playing the sanxian at a high school in Yan'an, Shaanxi province. [Photo provided to CHINA DAILY]
For centuries, Shaanbei Shuoshu, a musical storytelling tradition popular in Northwest China's Shaanxi province, served as a vital source of livelihood for blind performers who narrated tales through song at weddings and funerals in exchange for food and shelter.
Qiao Yangwen, a sighted 47-year-old who has performed the art for 32 years, has taken it upon himself to keep the traditional art form alive.
Over the years, Qiao has watched as the art — believed to date back 2,000 years — fade to near extinction, only to rise again as a national intangible cultural heritage.
However, a new threat looms: too few young successors.
Yet when he lifts his sanxian, a three-stringed lute, and straps on wooden clappers, he personifies its improbable arc from the Loess Plateau's dusty margins to a national treasure.
Qiao was born into a poor farming family in rural Yulin, in northern Shaanxi, during the early years of China's reform and opening-up in the late 1970s.
His parents worked a small plot of marginal land and raised a couple of goats. The family struggled to make ends meet, and Qiao had to drop out of school when they could no longer afford the tuition. He cannot recall the first time he watched a Shaanbei Shuoshu performance, but remembers the feelings it invoked.
"I was too young," he said.
He does remember that blind troupes visited his village twice a year. With little else to entertain him, Qiao would sit through every performance from start to finish, curious as to why the performers had visual impairments.
Before taking up Shuoshu, Qiao spent a year with an opera troupe in neighboring Shanxi province.
His parents had modest dreams for his future. They hoped he would learn a trade — anything but Shuoshu — to earn a decent living from and, one day, start a family.
But Qiao was too captivated by the tradition to heed their wishes. "I'm stubborn. Once I set my mind on something, I stick with it. That obsession never left me," he said.
What drew him was an art built on a rich repertoire of historical epics, folk legends, and moral fables — tales that, in an era before television and widespread literacy, served as the primary source of news, history, and entertainment for isolated communities across the Loess Plateau.
A single performer, armed with his voice, a sanxian, and wooden clappers strapped to his leg, could hold a crowd spellbound for hours.
So essential was the tradition that no wedding, funeral, or major festival was complete without the presence of a storyteller.
When Qiao began learning the art at 15, sighted performers had only recently been permitted to join a tradition that, for centuries, had been the exclusive domain of impoverished blind artists.
He turned to his older cousin, a sighted farmer who had briefly studied Shuoshu himself before giving it up to marry.
Qiao teaches Shaanbei Shuoshu to a group of primary students at a school in Yan'an. [Photo provided to CHINA DAILY]
The apprenticeship began humbly. In the autumn of 1995, Qiao arrived at his cousin's home with nothing but a pig's trotter as a gift and studied under him for two years. "I couldn't even afford a bottle of liquor," he said.
Once his apprenticeship ended, performance invitations followed, sending him from village to village with a packed schedule. But before long, the spread of television dimmed demand. "I was still young then, and I didn't think much about what the future might hold," he said.
The decline was even starker for older artists. He Si, a fellow performer in his 60s, still remembers the sting.
"The number of requests for my performances fell sharply," he said. "Everyone around me who quit Shuoshu to pursue business ventures seemed to be getting rich."
Today, Qiao is an official "inheritor" — a government-appointed guardian of intangible cultural heritage — and no longer worries about his livelihood. The title is part of a broader central government push to preserve China's fading traditions.
Shaanbei Shuoshu was among the first traditions added to a national protection list in 2006.
Local authorities have built dedicated venues, including the Shaanbei Shuoshu Center in the ancient city of Yulin, which hosts regular performances and interactive cultural experiences.
The government also organizes annual events such as the Shaanbei Shuoshu Convention to promote the art form and encourage exchanges among performers.
"The government has done a lot to support us," Qiao said. "But official recognition alone isn't enough."
Now his concern is for the future of the art form. "What troubles me most is that I don't see enough young performers emerging," he said. "They need to be able to make a living."
The dilemma is embodied in his apprentice, Fu Mei. At a rehearsal room in a performing arts center in Yan'an, she practices the sanxian daily. Initially, she was drawn to it for the financial benefits, but over time, she has developed a genuine love for the art. "I've thought about giving up," she said. "I don't know whether I'll be able to make a living from it in the future, but some things are worth more than money."
On a recent workday at the center, young artists chatted between rehearsals at one end of the hallway. At the other, Qiao packed away his old cassette tapes — relics of his own training, now used to teach the next generation.
"The tape recorder was my teacher when I started," he said. "Now I am the teacher, and these tapes are the bridge. I want to see a new generation of performers I trained myself, active across the land of northern Shaanxi. Let this treasure of our region be passed on healthily, sustainably, and for the long term."
Naziyeerke Bahetinuer, Wu Jiawei, Tao Jiayi, Ju Yiping and Wang Sihan contributed to this story.
lilei@chinadaily.com.cn
