The storytelling art of northern Shaanxi is a very important folk art form in northwestern areas of China. It is mainly popular in northern Shaanxi, such as Yan'an, Yulin etc. It originated from the performances of some poor blind men singing legends and stories in folk tunes of northern Shaanxi Province. Later, with the introduction of tunes of Meihu, qinqiang opera, Daoqing and Xintianyou, it gradually achieved the storytelling form of singing and telling full-length stories.
In a traditional northern Shaanxi storytelling performance, the artist accompanies himself on a sanxian (a three-stringed instrument) or pipa (a plucked string instrument with a fretted fingerboard) with north Shaanxi dialect, singing and telling stories in alternation. Based on the accompanying instrument, the storytelling is called sanxian shu (shu, storytelling) or pipa shu. In the 1930s and 1940s, the art form was developed by some famous artists, such as Han Qixiang, into the form that a person performed with the accompaniment of five instruments, namely sanxian (or pipa), slit drum, shuaban (a two-board instrument), mazhazha (a string of wood strips) and gongs (or cymbals). The libretto of the northern Shaanxi storytelling is popular, smooth and full of local features; the tunes are rich in variations, high-spirited, and bold. It is said that there are "nine arias and eighteen tunes".
The storytelling has a lot of tunes. Except the unique prologue or fixed libretto, there are almost no other restrictions, so the artists can perform in whatever way they like. Some excellent folk artists add a lot of tunes of northern Shaanxi folk songs, northern Shaanxi daoqing, northern Shaanxi yangko opera, northern Shaanxi wanwan tune, Shaanxi opera, meihu, Puzhou opera, Shanxi opera and Peking opera into one libretto, develop it, and create a unique libretto.
There are many traditional plays in the northern Shaanxi storytelling. Representative full-length ones include Hualiu Ji (Hualiu Story), Yaoqian Ji (Yaoqian Story), Guandeng Ji (Lantern Appreciation Story), Diaolingshan (Plume Fan), etc; short ones include Zhangqijie Xiafan (Story about Fairy Zhangqijie) and so on.