Thousand-year-old Nanyin reaches global audiences
Print Edition
DUBBED “a living fossil in Chinese musical history,” Nanyin is one of China’s oldest surviving music styles. Its history stretches back more than 1,000 years.
It was inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in 2009 and recognized for preserving an ancient musical language that links China’s Tang (AD 618-907) and Song (960-1279) dynasties to the present day.
Nanyin, literally the “southern tunes,” took shape in Minnan, the southern region of southeast China’s Fujian Province, particularly in the port city of Quanzhou.
Nanyin carries the delicate elegance of court music from central China, blended with local folk styles of Minnan over centuries.
Quanzhou’s role as a hub on the ancient Maritime Silk Road brought cultural influences from across Asia, but Nanyin retained its distinct identity.
The music is performed with a distinctive ensemble: a bamboo flute dongxiao, a horizontally held crooked-neck pipa, the two-stringed erxian, the three-stringed sanxian and percussion such as wooden clappers.
Its repertoire, now exceeding 3,000 pieces, includes purely instrumental works, vocal music with ensemble, and ballads in the Quanzhou dialect. The lyrics and melodies often come from ancient poetry, folk tales and local customs.
In a teahouse down a shaded alley in Quanzhou, the slow, plaintive sound of the erxian still drifts out into the street. At its center is 80-year-old Xia Yongxi, a veteran inheritor of Nanyin, playing alongside fellow musicians.
“This music has been with me my whole life,” he told Xinhua news agency. “It’s part of who we are in Quanzhou.”
Xia began learning the erxian from his teacher as a teenager and later mastered the pipa, dongxiao and the rare Nanyin instrument shuinuan. His skill and deep knowledge of the genre led to an invitation in 1984 from Filipino cultural groups to teach Nanyin abroad.
“In overseas communities, Nanyin is the warmest word. Hearing it connects people to home,” Xia said.
For centuries, Nanyin has accompanied weddings, funerals, temple fairs and seasonal rituals. In the face of modernization, it needs more than tradition to survive, Xia observed.
While elder musicians carry the deepest memory of its form, younger inheritors are working to connect it to today’s audiences.
One of them is Zheng Fanghui, a fourth-generation Nanyin artist born into a family where every member plays a role in the music.
Her mother, Wu Shuzhen, spent a decade in the 1990s teaching Nanyin in Indonesia, introducing it to overseas Chinese communities.
Zheng, 56, began learning at the age of 3 and gave her first public performance by 5. Now a music teacher at a Quanzhou middle school, she integrates Nanyin into her lessons and has authored textbooks adopted by the Ministry of Education.
“If young people don’t like the music, it will gradually disappear,” she told China News Service in an interview. “They need to feel it is theirs.”
Zheng often holds small performances at her home in Quanzhou’s Licheng District, welcoming neighbors and visitors to hear the delicate interplay of flute, lute and voice.
She has also proposed the creation of a Nanyin museum in Licheng to preserve antique instruments and rare recordings for future generations.
In nearby Jinjiang City, regular public concerts keep the music in the public eye.
Every Saturday in the restored Wudianshi historic district, the Jinjiang Nanyin Arts Troupe performs in settings enriched with traditional etiquette, tea service and incense.
“Around 220 societies in the city still perform Nanyin,” troupe leader Chen Mingwei told Xinhua. “But we need to innovate to attract younger performers.”
The troupe partners with schools and universities to teach the fundamentals and encourage student participation.
That local-to-global approach reached a new peak this summer, when Nanyin traveled to northern Europe.
At Finland’s renowned Savonlinna Opera Festival — held each summer inside the 15th century Olavinlinna Castle – the Shanghai Conservatory of Music brought Nanyin to the stage for the first time in the event’s history.
On July 22 at the Savonlinna Music Hall, students of the conservatory with instruments such as pipa, guzheng and ruan joined two Nanyin inheritors from Quanzhou Normal University. They brought the crooked-neck pipa, wooden clappers and wine cups used in traditional performance. Together, they presented one of China’s oldest music forms to European audiences.
One of the pieces, “Ruan” captures life’s departures and homecomings while painting a Nanyin soundscape of waves, spring light and ancient houses.
“Zou Ma” (Riding the Horse), adapted from a classic Nanyin suite, moves from imagined ancient Minnan landscapes to the graceful presence of Minnan women.
For many in the audience, it was the first time they had heard traditional Chinese music. Applause broke out between movements, and at the finale the audience rose to its feet.
“I was captivated right away,” said Spanish theater producer Perelada Festioal. “This music should be heard in Spain. You have brought something beautiful to northern Europe.”
Liao Changyong, president of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and a famous baritone, said: “Intangible cultural heritage should be a living heritage.”
He said the conservatory will keep refining these types of programs so that Chinese traditional music can travel the world and tell its stories to more audiences.
“Our aim is to ignite the DNA of thousand-year-old Nanyin with today’s musical forms. This is what we mean by preserving tradition while embracing innovation,” Liao added.
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