Four Masters of Chinese Storytelling Storytelling on Video: Full-length Repertoires of Yangzhou

edited by Vibeke Børdahl, Fei Li and Huang Ying

This volume has its origins in the project 'Large-scale Registration of Chinese Storytelling', which involved the recording on film of 360 hours of performances by the four masters of Yangzhou storytelling, Dai Buzhang, Fei Zhengliang, Gao Zaihua and Ren Jitang. Four sets of these films have been deposited (in Washington D.C., Taipei, Beijing and Copenhagen) so that future generations of scholars will have access to this unique material. The purpose of Four Masters is two-fold: first, it functions as a guide to the collections in situ (and one, moreover, that by its availability in libraries worldwide will promote further research into this material); second, with its introductory chapters, teller autobiographies, performances and catalogue entries (plus the audio-visual material), it stands as an independent and valuable contribution to research in Asian oral traditions. With all text appearing in both English and Chinese and with its subject matter brought alive by a wealth of photographs plus 60-minute film on VCD, this volume promises to be a classic work in its field.

“Four Masters of Chinese Storytelling is an innovative work that introduces one of the great Chinese oral traditions to audiences around the world. The uniqueness of this book is immediately apparent from glancing at the book’s covers … one [cover is] in English and the flip-side in Chinese. … Four Masters of Chinese Storytelling offers a compelling and rich illustration of the Yangzhou storytelling tradition, and will appeal to specialists and non-specialists alike.” - Asian Folklore Studies, 2005, vol. LXIV, no. 2, pp. 322-324

Vibeke Børdahl, Ph. D., Dr. Phil., senior researcher at NIAS, has been described as one of the most accomplished scholars in the study of Chinese oral literature. As well as doing much research on the interplay of oral and written traditions in Chinese popular literature and performance culture, over the past decade she has translated the full work of Jin Ping Mei into Danish.

Publication year: 2004
416 pp / 234mm x 156mm
richly illustrated
ISBN: 978-87-91114-64-9, Hardback

NIAS Press