The Preservation and Inheritance of Pingtan Should "Go Deeper into the Mountains"

With a history of over 400 years, Suzhou Pingtan, renowned for its profound cultural heritage and distinctive artistic style, stands as a "magnificent and profound" cultural mountain range. Since its inclusion in China's National Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2006, the past two decades have witnessed remarkable progress in the inheritance and development of Pingtan art. Cultural authorities have made significant efforts to cultivate talent, innovate works, and construct performance venues. Meanwhile, shifts in the contemporary cultural market have brought "alternative" prosperity to Pingtan. However, appreciating and protecting such a "beautiful mountain" cannot stop at superficial engagement; we must venture deeper into its dense forests and verdant peaks, delve into the essence of Pingtan itself, grasp the laws of its artistic evolution, and employ more systematic and meticulous strategies to advance its protection and inheritance. 

Traditional repertoires serve as the foundation and lifeblood of Suzhou Pingtan, embodying its rich history, continuous cultural lineage, and outstanding achievements. Suzhou Pingtan, as a cultural heritage, would cease to exist without these traditional repertoires. According to incomplete statistics, there are over 156 notable long-form repertoires in the history of Pingtan, including 70 Pinghua (storytelling) and 86 Tanci (ballad-singing) works, with many more being eliminated or remaining obscure. Pingtan theorist Zhou Liang has identified 38 outstanding traditional repertoires in Pingtan's history based on their inheritance and dissemination. In recent years, the "Suzhou Pingtan Repertoire Library," comprising five series and 35 volumes, has been successively compiled and published, containing 24 performance versions of traditional repertoires. Numerous long-form performance scripts are still preserved in archives, libraries, and museums and scattered among the populace, and these unpublished resources have also garnered scholarly attention. However, in contrast to the vast wealth of Pingtan repertoires, the actual inheritance state is concerning. From the Pingtan performance market perspective, the number of traditional repertoires that can be inherited is less than 30, accounting for only 18.6% of the 156 traditional repertoires counted by Zhou Liang. Most traditional repertoires have been lost or are on the verge of extinction. Evidently, in the 20 years since Pingtan was inscribed on the list of intangible cultural heritage, the compilation and adaptation of traditional repertoires have fallen short of expectations.

However, it is essential to recognise that Pingtan repertoires are fluid texts that reflect the ethos of their times. Most of the traditional repertoires we admire today have undergone processing and compilation after 1949, and the classic excerpts within these traditional works were born mainly out of the "restoration" efforts of Pingtan repertoires in the 1950s and 1960s. In the traditional era, Pingtan performances were characterised by long-form storytelling in dockside performance venues, encapsulated in the saying, "A lifetime's livelihood from a single narrative, three strings binding travellers far and wide." However, the state of artistic survival is not synonymous with the essential nature of the art itself. The traditional performance space of Pingtan, the "storytelling venue," is poised for evolution and expansion. Pingtan is set to enter diverse arenas such as theatres, gardens, concert halls, and live-streaming studios. While the "long-form" narrative remains the primary mode of traditional Pingtan, with changes in the performing arts market and audience preferences, various performance formats such as streamlined versions, theatre editions, and serial productions will emerge. From the perspective of artistic growth and cultural evolution, the physical space of dockside storytelling venues and the artistic form of long-form continuous storytelling are not the essence or key to the preservation and inheritance of Pingtan. The focus of Pingtan's preservation and inheritance should lie in promoting the systematic compilation and steady enhancement of outstanding traditional repertoires and creating new performance texts and forms on the modern stages.

Traditional Pingtan repertoires typically span several months or even half a year in performance length. Today, the conventional format for full-length performances in Pingtan venues is 15 episodes over half a month. If full-length repertoires are adapted for theatres or other spaces, the performance length often needs further reduced. However, the core issue is not the length but the refinement of the textual quality and performance skills, constituting the essence of inheritance. This parallels the performance patterns of Kunqu Opera. Kunqu legendary scripts are usually lengthy, consisting of dozens of acts, but full-length performances are not the norm on Kunqu stages. Instead, they are mainly presented in selected acts or adapted versions, each embodying the creators' distinct artistic visions and thematic interests. The streamlined version of The Jade Dragonfly by the Suzhou Pingtan Troupe exemplifies this compilation approach. The traditional repertoire of The Jade Dragonfly comprises 50 to 60 episodes. The streamlined version selects nine episodes from the latter part of the original, editing them into three chapters titled "Son's Return," "Recognizing the Mother," and "Restoring Lineage." These chapters are performed consecutively over three weekends, each lasting approximately 100 minutes. While seemingly discrete, the three chapters are interconnected, creating a performance mode akin to a "serial drama." More significantly, the streamlined version focuses on Xu Yuanzai, with each chapter highlighting his profound filial piety. In "Son's Return," Yuanzai borrows from the Jin family and becomes Jin Zhangshi's adopted son out of filial devotion to his foster parents. In "Recognizing the Mother," he braves public opinion to acknowledge his biological mother in the nunnery, again out of filial piety. In "Restoring Lineage," he grapples with conflicts between the Jin and Xu families while striving to uphold his mother's dignity, ultimately choosing to "carry half the surname Jin and half the surname Xu," still driven by filial piety. A relatively coherent thematic structure is formed by threading "filial piety" throughout the nine episodes, rendering this adaptation a secondary creation of the traditional repertoire. In fact, secondary creation has its roots in tradition. The art of storytelling has always been characterised by "each storyteller's unique interpretation," with different treatments of the same theme reflecting历代 storytellers' (storytellers across generations') earnest concern and heartfelt anticipation for the characters' fates, as well as their understanding and reconciliation of the complex ethical, moral, patriarchal, and marital relationships depicted in the stories.

Another adaptation model involves retaining and compiling traditional excerpts while simultaneously creating new ones, blending the old and the latest to forge new narrative paths and distil fresh themes. This represents a more dynamic approach to preservation and inheritance. Sheng Xiaoyun's work Na's New Tales, a spin-off from the traditional repertoire Romance of Tears and Laughter, exemplifies this concept of "new branches sprouting from an old trunk." Na's New Tales consists of four series, totalling twelve excerpts. While a few excerpts are taken from the original performance script, most are newly created. In previous performances by Pingtan masters, the central plotline of Romance of Tears and Laughter revolved around the tragic love story of Shen Fengxi and Fan Jiashu. Utilising a sociological analysis approach once prevalent in literary creation, storytellers deliberately portrayed Shen Fengxi as a vulnerable woman wronged and harmed, downplaying her negative traits such as vanity, materialism, and obsession with wealth. Regarding He Lina, they viewed her as a courtesan from a "bourgeois" background. Although she exhibited endearing qualities in some segments, the storytellers still implicitly criticised her. Sheng Xiaoyun, however, shifts the focus to the love story between He Lina and Fan Jiashu, centring the psychological drama on He Lina—the most passionate, obsessed, and conflicted character in this tragicomic love saga. She crafts many plausible storylines and meticulous, nuanced psychological portrayals, revealing the more captivating undercurrents of He Lina's personality beneath her beautiful and infatuated exterior.

In newly composed excerpts such as "Escaping Marriage on a Rainy Night," Sheng Xiaoyun infuses her performances with novelty by delving deep into the characters' psyches, creating many captivating segments that explore the inner worlds of the characters and are imbued with a rich contemporary spirit. In her pursuit of love, He Lina is infatuated yet not indulgent, affectionate yet self-aware. In conflicts and entanglements, she dares to stand up in crisis and knows when to retreat amidst contradictions. In her personal growth, she dares to "know herself, refine herself, and consciously transform herself." The relay transformation between the "old trunk" and the "new branches" constitutes the continuation and rebirth of a traditional repertoire.

The most exquisite segments from traditional repertoires are predominantly popular in the Pingtan (a form of narrative singing) world in medium-length pieces. Examples include "Dasheng Hall" from Legend of the White Snake, "Mother-in-law and Daughter-in-law Reunion" from Pearl Tower, "Snatching the Child in the Hall" and "Recognizing the Mother in the Nunnery" from Jade Dragonfly, "Three Appointments at the Peony Pavilion" and "Dian Qiu xiang" from Three Smiles, as well as "Warm Pot as Matchmaker", "Praying for Rain at Xuandu Temple", and "The Old Local Guardian" from Painted Golden Phoenix, among others. These medium-length Pingtan pieces possess high literary quality and aesthetic value and have significantly driven innovation and refinement in genre-specific vocal styles and performance techniques. With a performance length of approximately two hours, the medium-length format facilitates organising touring performances, promoting the dissemination and inheritance of traditional repertoires. Today's compilation efforts should draw on these experiences, adapting to changes in the art market and aesthetic demands by continuously discovering and polishing a batch of medium-length works to attract more contemporary and young audiences to traditional repertoires. Of course, the essence of conventional repertoires extends far beyond these examples. Since the 1990s, the Pingtan community has embarked on a cross-century project to select and publish outstanding excerpts from Pingtan repertoires. By 2004, five volumes comprising 13 books of Selected Suzhou Pingtan Repertoires had been published sequentially, containing 333 excerpts, including excellent selections from 70 full-length works, 32 medium-length works, and 16 short pieces. This compilation, akin to the anthology of Kunqu Opera's Zhui Bai Qiu (a collection of the best excerpts from Kunqu plays), essentially encompasses the brilliant highlights of Pingtan's traditional repertoires. Like mining copper from mountains and refining gold into jade, these outstanding excerpts should be systematically inherited, revived, and brought to the stage. The excerpts included in in Selected Repertoires also encompass modern-themed works created after 1949, such as the full-length pieces Erhei's Marriage and Li Shuang shuang, as well as the medium-length works Xiaohe and True Feelings, False Intentions. These preserved repertoires continue the new traditions of Pingtan art and are equally worthy of excavation, compilation, and regular performance to keep them fresh and vibrant.

Innovation in Pingtan repertoires is crucial in preserving and inheriting this art form. Pingtan, characterised by its everyday, worldly narrative style, offers insights into societal changes through the lens of micro-level life experiences. It gently narrates the intricacies of human relationships and worldly wisdom amidst the mundane tales of family affairs, distilling the essence from the ordinary and excavating human nature from the commonplace. Its language is light-hearted, humorous, implicit, and nuanced, sharing a lineage with the literary traditions of the Jiangnan region. Adapting the rich literary resources of the Jiangnan area into Pingtan performance scripts is an essential tradition in creating Pingtan repertoires. From the "San Yan Er Pai" (Three Words and Two Beats) of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties to the "Mandarin Duck and Butterfly School" of modern literature, all have served as literary sources for Pingtan adaptations. In recent years, the Shanghai Pingtan Troupe has adapted award-winning works of the Mao Dun Literature Prize, such as Blossoms Shanghai and Panorama of Rivers and Mountains a Thousand Li Apart, gradually forming Pingtan's "new Shanghai narratives." These literary masterpieces born in the Jiangnan region inherently possess the genes of Pingtan adaptation. When Jin Yucheng was creating Blossoms Shanghai, the slow storytelling of a narrator echoed in his ears, and the novel's narrative shifts mirror the traditional Pingtan performance format of day and night sessions. Lu Wenfu, the pioneer of "alley literature," not only learned narrative techniques and structural layouts from Pingtan but even infused his novelistic language with the unique syntax and tone of the Wu dialect.

The image of Zhu Ziye, a cynical yet worldly-wise character in Gourmet, clearly bears the shadow of Qian Dutiao in Painted Golden Phoenix. Many of his novel's biographies of Alley Characters, drawn from the lives of ordinary people, would undoubtedly make for splendid, concise short Tanci (a form of narrative singing in Pingtan) adaptations. Fan Xiaoqing's novel narrative style and linguistic flair also benefit significantly from Suzhou Pingtan. Her works from The Legend of Kudang LanetoOsmanthus-Scented Street and City ExpressionstoBarefoot Doctor Wan Quanhe bear a strong, authentic "storyteller's flavour." Efforts should be strengthened in topic selection and planning to identify and reserve a batch of literary IPs suitable for Pingtan adaptation. Pingtan performers and professional screenwriters should be organised to collaborate on adaptations and refinements, thereby adding new and enduring repertoires to the Pingtan library.

The beauty of mountains lies not only in their profoundness and weight but also in the flow of their spirit. The work of preserving and inheriting Pingtan requires "venturing deeper into the mountains," bridging the dual attributes of Pingtan as both a "cultural heritage" and an "artistic production." It involves safeguarding the cultural essence of Pingtan art while promoting the integration of this ancient art form into the modern cultural landscape. By innovating through inheritance and inheriting through innovation, we can collectively create a new Pingtan that belongs to our era.