The Eternal Storyteller

Oral Literature in Modern China

Vibeke Boerdahl

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136108501
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Chinese storytelling has survived through more than a millennium into our own time, while similar oral arts have fallen into oblivion in the West. Under the main heading of 'The Eternal Storyteller', in August 1996 the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies hosted an International Workshop on Oral Literature in Modern China. To this meeting, the first of its kind in Europe, five special guests were invited - master tellers from Yangzhou: Wang Xizotang, Li Xintang, Fei Zhengliang, Dai Buzhang and Hui Zhaolong. The volume derived from this meeting includes an introductory article written by John Miles Foley entitled 'A Comparative View on Oral Traditions'. Thereafter, a wide range of topics relating to Chinese oral literature is covered under the headings: 'Historical Lines', 'A Spectrium of Genres', 'Studies of Yangzhou and Suzhou Story- telling' and 'Performances of Yangzhou Storytelling'. However, the present volume does more than include papers derived from the meeting. It is also lavishly illustrated in word and picture from performances by the guest-storytellers. In so doing, the world of Chinese story telling is not just described and analysed - it is also brought to life.

The aim of this essay is to compare narrative texts [shuci] from several schools of storytelling [pinghua] among the ‘Three Kingdoms’ [San guo] traditions of our time.¹ In particular, we want to study what kind of inner congruity there exists between a number of versions from various schools of storytelling belonging to the same geographical area. We shall also take a look at the relationship between storytelling [pinghua] and the San guo zhi Pinghua² [Folk Book of Three Kingdoms] (edition of 1321–1323) (1955), the forerunner of the novel San guo yanyi [The Romance of the Three Kingdoms] (Luo Guanzhong 1957, 1980).

The Suzhou storytellers Tang Gengliang (1962) and Lu Yaoliang (1962) both have the episode of ‘Zhou Yu Falls I11’ and their versions are very similar, but if we compare their versions to that of Kang Chonghua (1962), a Yangzhou storyteller, we find a considerable difference. Even though Tang and Lu belong to different branches of Suzhou storytelling, the wording of the episodes that they share is very similar. Here we do not mean the key gestes³ which San guo yanyi and the storytellers' texts have in common (marked in bold), but we are speaking about the additional gestes that the two storytellers use to fill in the ‘intervals’. When these kinds of gestes are similar, this cannot be explained away as accidental, I think. (Cf. Table 1 at the end of this chapter, Tang Gengliang's gestes, Nos 11,12 and 20, are the same as Lu Yaoliang's gestes, Nos 4, 5 and 58. The passages concerned are marked in italics.) The reason why some of the gestes of the two Suzhou storytellers are similar is because they have added the same kind of background scenery and situation.

The appearance of a number of medical officers in the versions of the two Suzhou storytellers serves to throw the action of Zhuge Liang into sharp relief. The doctors from the army are added to these narratives as embellishments of a single phrase in the novel: ‘doctors were sent for to cure the illness’. In the version by Kang Chonghua we do not find this ingredient. That is, however, the result of being edited away in the 1962 edition, since the episode is restored to the 1985 edition (pp. 544–547) in a very detailed form.

In the early version of Luo Guanzhong's San guo zhi tongsu yanyi [The Popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms] (1980), the passage about the doctors is not mentioned at all. The phrase ‘doctors were sent for to cure the illness’, etc., has been added by Mao Zonggang in his edition San guo yanyi from the seventeenth century (1957), probably in order to let the conflict develop in a more complicated manner. Mao Zonggang must have felt that this single phrase was not enough, and therefore he explicitly added a comment, indicating rather clearly his reasons for this addition, as follows: ‘In the Northern army doctors were called, and Zhou Yu also called for doctors’. A few chapters earlier in San guo yanyi, it has already been mentioned that the Northern troops led by Cao Cao were not used to being tossed around on the Yangtze river and became seasick. Pang Tong (also a military counsellor like Zhuge Liang) asks Cao Cao if he has a good doctor and also offers the ‘strategy of chaining together’, suggesting that the warships should be chained to each other with iron rings. The intention of Mao Zonggang is to link these two passages to each other. This linking seems, however, somewhat far-fetched. Therefore the storytellers have not followed suit. As we have seen, in all the versions using this phrase, added by Mao Zonggang, the doctors from the army only serve to set off Zhuge Liang, and the episode has absolutely nothing to do with events taking place in Cao Cao's camp.

A session of storytelling must be concluded within a few hours and it is not possible to draw many analogies or make a lot of references to what has happened during earlier sessions. This also is an influential factor vis-à-vis the above question. Sometimes it may be a case of pure coincidence when various storytellers have similar gestes in their versions. This may also be the nature of some details which are not found in the San guo yanyi, but which — for logical, customary or circumstantial causes — have been composed in a similar way by storytellers from various geographical areas. For example, the Yangzhou storyteller Kang Chonghua and the Suzhou storyteller Lu Yaoliang both have added a certain detail to their stories, i.e. when Zhou Yu has his pulse felt, a book is used instead of a pillow. In Chinese medicine, when feeling somebody's pulse, the patient usually places his hand on a small pillow. In the military supervisor's tent such a pillow is of course not at hand, and therefore it is substituted with a book. The specific concretization of the orally narrated stories is achieved by adding such details.

If we only rely on this single episode in order to investigate the congruence of plot elements in various versions of the ‘Three Kingdoms’ from one area, the material is however insufficient. So let us take another example. We have at hand recordings of two Suzhou storytellers' versions of the ‘Meeting at Gucheng’, namely that of Tang Gengliang (1958) and that of Wang Xiongfei (1962). First a summary of the contents. In chapter 28 of San guo yanyi it is described how Guan Yu leaves the camp of Cao Cao, and while escorting the two wives of Liu Bei sets out to find his sworn brothers Liu Bei and Zhang Fei. One day they arrive at a mountain town. The local people tell them that the place is called Gucheng and the head of the town is precisely Zhang Fei. Guan Yu tells Sun Qian to enter the town first and deliver a message asking Zhang Fei to come and welcome the wives of his older brother, Liu Bei, outside the town. Zhang Fei, who earlier had been informed about Guan Yu's capitulation to Cao Cao, brings along his men. Wielding his spear, he expresses his intent to kill Guan Yu as a traitor. Guan Yu says that it is difficult for him to explain the situation here and now, but Zhang Fei should ask the two ladies. The two women plead strongly for the innocence of Guan Yu, but Zhang Fei does not believe them. He points to a group of cavalry coming up behind them, taking them for Cao Cao's men. In order to prove his sincerity, Guan Yu volunteers to behead the leader of the cavalry, Cai Yang. Before a roll of drums has been completed, Cai Yang's head falls to the ground and Cao Cao's men are scattered. Zhang Fei questions the young ensign-bearer who has been captured during the incident, and only then does he realize that he has wrongly blamed Guan Yu and asks for forgiveness.

In our view, a detailed analysis of Tang and Wang's versions of the ‘Meeting at Gucheng’ offers us the most ideal kind of material concerning the common characteristics of local storytelling. These two versions are compared in Table 2 at the end of this chapter. Among the gestes added by the two storytellers into the ‘intervals’, twenty are shared in both versions. In other words, they should each have ‘thought out from their heart’ twenty similar gestes which are ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Nordic Institute of Asian Studies
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Note on Transcription
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• The Eternal Storyteller
• Historical Lines
• A Spectrum of Genres
• Studies of Yangzhou and Suzhou Storytelling
• Performances of Yangzhou Storytelling
• A List of Studies on Chinese Storytelling and Other Quyi Genres
• Chen Wulou: Selected bibliography
• Boris L. Riftin: Selected Bibliography
• Glossary
• Index