Western Han: A Yangzhou Storyteller’s Script

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Notes

1 Lu Xun 鲁迅, Zhongguo xiaoshuo shilűe 中国小说史略 (A Brief History of Chinese Fiction, first published 1925; modern edition Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2009).

2 See particularly Patrick Hanan, The Chinese Short Story (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973).

3 Liangyan Ge, Out of the Margins: The Rise of Chinese Vernacular Fiction (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001), pp. 64–100; Liangyan Ge, “In Search of a ‘Common Storehouse of Convention’: Narrative Affinities between Shuihu zhuan and the Judge Bao cihua cluster,” in The Interplay of the Oral and the Written in Chinese Popular Literature, edited by Vibeke Børdahl and Margaret B. Wan (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2010), pp. 31–60.

4 Wilt L. Idema, Chinese Vernacular Fiction (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974), p. 322.

5 Chen Wulou was one of the few scholars to claim that scripts were employed by some performers in the pre-contemporary era. These scripts could be sketchy or elaborate, depending on the education of the storyteller. See Chen Wulou, “Some Topics in My Study of Yangzhou Storytelling,” in Vibeke Børdahl, The Eternal Storyteller: Oral Literature in Modern China (Richmond and Surrey: Curzon Press, 1999), pp. 214–217. However, he did not present detailed examples.

6 On the use of scripts in some genres see Vibeke Børdahl, Wu Song Fights the Tiger: The Interaction of Oral and Written Traditions in the Chinese Novel, Drama, and Storytelling (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2013) pp. 234–235.

7 See particularly Børdahl, The Oral Tradition of Yangzhou Storytelling. Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Monograph Series, No. 73 (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1996); Børdahl, “The Storyteller’s Manner in Chinese Storytelling,” Asian Folklore Studies 62.1 (2003): 65–112; and Børdahl, Wu Song Fights the Tiger.

8 Børdahl, “Written Scripts in the Oral Tradition of Yangzhou Storytelling,” in Lifestyle and Entertainment in Yangzhou, edited by Lucie Olivovά and Vibeke Børdahl (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2009), p. 267.

9 For details see Børdahl, “Written Scripts in the Oral Tradition of Yangzhou Storytelling,” pp. 248–250.

10 More detail of his training is given in Vibeke Børdahl and Jette Ross, Chinese Storytellers—Life and Art in the Yangzhou Tradition (Boston: Cheng & Tsui Company, 2002), pp. 127–133. In the above, Dai claims that when he learnt the Journey to the West storytelling tradition he never read the famous novel and did not rely at all on written material. However, in the case of the Western Han, he read the manuscript written down by his father’s master. He states that it took him only three months to master the Western Han because he had the script to hand and his uncle gave him private lessons.

11 Børdahl, “Written Scripts in the Oral Tradition of Yangzhou Storytelling,” p. 266.

12 Ibid., p. 258.

13 Ibid., p. 267.

14 There is an interesting parallel here with the earliest extant edition of the Sanguo yanyi (the Jiajing edition, c. 1522). The opening scene presents two memorials to the reigning emperor denouncing the influence of eunuchs and concubines on court affairs. These memorials derive from historical sources and were not retained in subsequent editions. As in the Western Han storytelling tradition, these memorials set the thematic and moral parameters of the developing story.