Shaoxing Pinghu tune,alias"Yuejun Nanci",is called"Shaoxing Pingdiao"for short.This folk art prevails in Shaoxing and the surrounding area,and it gets this name because its major tune is"Pinghu tune".It is said that Shaoxing Pinghu tune was initially created in the early Ming Dynasty and taken shape in the early Qing Dynasty.It is performed by one actor,who sings and tells the story while playing the sanxian.Singing is the major form,which is interspersed with story telling.
During the reign of Emperor Qianlong(1736-1795),Pinghu tune had appeared in Shaoxing in the name of"Yuejun Nanci".Hu Siyuan,the famous actor of Shaoxing Pinghu tune,was enjoying equal fame with Liu Jingting and Su Kunsheng-the celebrated actors in the folk art circle.Started from Hu Siyuan,Pinghu tune got into the upper class.The actors were amateurs and they did not profit by it.In the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China,Zhou Dunfu,who developed a singing school of his own,was most famous actor in the Pinghu tune circle,and his singing was praised as"Dun tune"(Zhou Dunfu's singing genre);Zhou Dunfu's younger brother also enjoyed a good reputation in Shaoxing Pinghu tune.After Zhou Dunfu passed away,his daughter Xiagu left her hometown to perform Pinghu tune.She tried her best for fear of being inferior to her father in the performing art.
Shaoxing Pinghu tune is a kind of singing and talking art with actors sitting to perform.Three actors play the small sanxian,dulcimer(yangqin)and urheen respectively,and they are called"three sets of instruments";if the vertical flute and lute are added in the performance,then they will be called"five sets of instruments";if the"shuangqing"and"sheng"(both are traditional Chinese instruments)are added in,the they are called"seven sets of instruments";and they will be called"nine sets of instruments"if the"yueqin"and"touguan"(also traditional Chinese instrument)are added in.No matter how many sets of instruments there are,only the actor playing the sanxian sings and talks,while the others play their own instruments without singing.The performance of Pinghu tune always begins with the singing of jieshi(literally,section poem),and then followed by huishu and singing and talking.The actor introduces kung-fu,expresses emotion,narrates and describes landscapes and delineates characters.It is sung in Shaoxing official language,only clowns use Beijing dialect,Suzhou dialect or Hangzhou dialect to talk occasionally.Ping tune is the basic tune,but it is also interspersed with the four famous qu tunes,namely,Delightful Fang Tune,Angry Field Cricket,Sad Tang Tune and Joyful Luojinqian;in addition,there are tunes such as Suonanzhi,Jishengcao and Tanhuang tune.
Most of the Huishus in Pinghu tune are created by men of letters,and the"basic tune"(i.e.Pinghu tune)is the commonly used tune,which is supplemented by scores of Zaqu and ballads.The changed form of the"basic tune"is called"Xidiao"(fine tune).The lines of the basic tune are seven character lines which are couplets;the first line and even-number lines share the same rhyme;pauses are used between them sometimes.Many passages end in a pattern of three lines,and the three lines form one unit,which is called"Fengdiantou"(a phoenix nods).There are eight generic sentence patterns in the basic tune,all of which are contained in the excerpt of the poem I Remember the Drizzly Day when the Pear Blossoms are in Bloom.According to the statistics in the 1950s,there were 22 books and 175 chapters of Pinghu tune in Shaoxing.Apart from the Huishu,there were a large number of jieshi(excerpt of poems),which was said to be over 100.Jieshi(excerpt of poem),which is similar to the beginning of Suzhou Tanci,are composed with seven character lines,and this short libretto can express the emotion and narrate stories.They do not necessarily have a complete plot.
