Straight Storytelling

Straight Storytelling: Pinghua (Southern) or pingshu (Northern) both represent the very widespread kind of storytelling that is exclusively spoken (in the local dialect)—it has neither sung sections nor musical accompaniment. Most of these narratives (fully-told may vary from one month to two years) are long, episodic, and, therefore, in the south at least, are known loosely also as dashu, big stories or stories whose content is about great (historical) events. Every area of China has a form resembling pingshu, which is told in that area’s dialect. Although the props may differ slightly—xingmu (waking-up stick), handkerchief, fan, cymbals, etc.—these forms are structurally the same. It is generally accepted that this kind of storytelling is the most difficult, lacking as it does fixed, ready-made as it were, musical sections and the intrinsic, attractive quality of musical singing and accompaniment. While spoken narrative does have certain traditional formulaic descriptive pieces that may be used to describe events, people and scenery, the storyteller, for the most part, must rely entirely on his verbal ingenuity, voice, and facial expressions to captivate his audience day after day, month after month. Therefore, even though narratives are essentially learned by listening to the older generation, the younger generation of pingshu/pinghua artists, in remembering and performing oral narratives, must exercise enough creative talent to make old stories interesting and compelling to contemporary audiences. (Pingtan is a composite term that includes Suzhou pinghua [straight narrative] and Suzhou tanci [chantefable: a story told in alternating sung and spoken parts; the sung parts are accompanied by one or two musical instruments: the pipa 琵琶 [four-stringed plucked lute, originally from Persia] and the sanxian 三弦 [Japanese name: Samisen: three-stringed fretless plucked lute]