IN the days long before television and the Internet, shuoshu (storytelling) provided Chinese people with a means of hearing news, learning history and practicing language skills.

But in our age of information, this traditional art has fallen out of favor.

Shuoshu is a form of mass entertainment that originated around 2,000 years ago. Performers often wear gowns and sit or stand behind a table to tell stories of ancient Chinese history in teahouses or theaters. Performances may feature local dialects.

In Hangzhou, shuoshu is also called Hangzhou pinghua and originated during the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) as the royal court retreated from northern Henan Province and took the south city as its capital. In Hangzhou, locals adapted the art by giving performances in the Hangzhou dialect, sometimes with Henan dialect.

This unique style of shuoshu flourished from the Southern Song Dynasty through the 1980s. However, it has declined in recent years, with "a smaller audience, fewer performers and fewer venues," said Li Zixin, an 80-year-old Hangzhou pinghua performer.

The octogenarian grew up listening to pinghua and has performed the art throughout his life, except for during the "cultural revolution" (1966-1976). During that time, Li, who was a big name in pinghua, worked as a farmer. On his return to performing, he found "almost every community in the city had a theater because people needed cultural things badly then."

But this popularity did not last much longer. With the arrival of television in every household, people's passion for listening to historic stories in teahouses waned.

Since then, Hangzhou pinghua has been listed as an intangible cultural heritage, while Li, said to be the only practitioner who can still tell Eastern Han Dynasty (AD 25-220) stories, is recognized as an "inheritor" of the cultural heritage.

Today there are only two pinghua theaters in the city, one in a seniors' center of Xidaguan No. 1 Community and the other in Happy Teahouse at Gongchen Bridge.

Shanghai Daily visited the seniors' center to take in a show. Currently, female pinghua performer Zhu Jianping performs there every day.

On the day of our visit, Zhu was reciting part of the story of the "Generals of the Yang Family," detailing the military exploits of the Yang family during the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127).

Following tradition, a story is told in more than 100 sections - each about two hours. So to finish a story can take months.

Without any make-up, Zhu acted the different roles in the story: men and women; old and young; sometimes animals too.

A folded fan, a gavel and sometimes a handkerchief were her only props. The gavel is to strike the table to attract attention - especially at the beginning and end - and to strengthen the effect of the performance.

The handkerchief is used when the performer wipes tears away or writes a letter.

The fan is a very versatile prop which can represent a weapon, a pen and a cane, among other objects, when folded; an oar when half open; and the sail of a ship when fully open.

Performers add their own commentaries on subjects and characters, so the audience gets a history lesson as well as entertainment.

It is noticeable that the majority of audience are in their 70s or 80s, and most of the remainder in their 60s. The seniors say they're occasionally joined by people in their 50s.

This loyal audience of seniors cite similar reasons for spending two hours a day in the theater. It's a way to "appreciate art," "make new friends" or just to "kill time," they say.

Another reason seniors give is that they grew up with Hangzhou dialect as their mother tongue, and it's more familiar to them than Mandarin.

But pinghua may seem less appealing to younger generations in our fast-pace modern society.

"Most of the pinghua stories are old, there are few young performers and hearing a story requires coming to performances for at least two months," said Wang Yingyan, an executive of Hangzhou Comedy Art Theater. "Why would young people be interested in that?"

Also, Hangzhou dialect has evolved since Mandarin was popularized over the country, meaning that young people often need to work hard to understand the traditional recitals.

And there are few new Hangzhou pinghua works, with performers usually sticking to the stories of dynasties.

Ma Laifa, 74, a former professional pinghua performer, created new pieces of pinghua in the 1980s. These usually last less than two hours in total and are stories about more recent modern times.

"If no professional writers create new stories, the art will fall behind the times," said Ma, now a researcher with Zhejiang Literary Federation and commissioner of Zhejiang Intangible Cultural Heritage Expert Committee.

"My pieces were popular for a while, but today people need new stories - stories about what's happening now," said Ma.

To meet this need, Ma has championed entertainer and actress Shen Ying, a 37-year-old from the Art Troupe of Zhejiang Armed Police Corps, to perform and create modern-style Hangzhou pinghua.

Shen and her husband Tang Aichao, vice director of the troupe, have created three new pieces, each no longer than 15 minutes, adapted from modern stories.

"To make the art live, new works and creativity are necessary," explained Shen, who speaks in the modern Hangzhou dialect understood by young locals.

But Shen does not yet see herself as a professional pinghua performer because she has not learned any traditional story from old performers. This will be demanding work, she acknowledged.

"Hangzhou pinghua is never taught through textbooks, only orally," explained Zhu Jianxin.

Zhu said usually a traditional pinghua performer is good at one to two stories, and grasps no more than five. This is not hard to understand, considering a traditional story is told over hundreds of hours, has tens of thousands of characters that are only embedded in a performer's brain.

Hangzhou Comedy Art Theater recorded many old performers' shows in order to transcribe the storytelling, though the project is not yet complete.

"To save the art the local government should offer financial support," said Zhu. "Then we could hire writers, cultivate young performers, record old performers' stories and arrange more performances."