Chinese minstrelsy: The popular cultural performance art of Jinhua Daoqing

This article first describes the distinctive characteristics of Jinhua Daoqing, a shuo-chang (speak-sing) genre, traditionally performed by blind male practitioners (with yugu drum and clappers) on urban streets and in teahouses, in village squares and at temple fairs, weaving together traditional folk tales and stories, with commentary on more recent and local events. As a result, Daoqing was often called ‘Singing the News’ (chang xinwen), a kind of minstrelsy, with a communication as well as an entertainment function.

The article moves on to present the genre’s historical narrative, which stretches from its supposed origins with Daoist Immortal Zhang Guolao, through the Republican period (1911–49), when it was exceeded in popularity in Jinhua only by the local opera. Practitioners of Daoqing survived into the Communist period (1949–present), and some achieved considerable renown prior to the Cultural Revolution (1966–78), by tailoring their messages to the circumstances of the ‘new society’. Despite suppression during the Cultural Revolution, ‘underground’ performances were said to have been held, and during the early period of economic reform, the genre experienced a vibrant revival. Daoqing performers came out of the backrooms to perform in public once again, and local cultural offices held classes to train up a new generation of ‘sighted’ performers. But the genre faces new challenges in the world of expanding and globalizing media, and may not survive another generation. This article concludes by placing Daoqing performers alongside the musings of Walter Benjamin (1955) about storytellers as communicators in an ‘artisan mode of production’, increasingly eclipsed and superseded, nay, overwhelmed by new forms of media and multimedia.