Majie, a small town in Baofeng County, Henan Province, is a big name to the country’s ballad singers.
Each year, from the 11th to the 13th of the first month in the Chinese lunar calendar, a ballad festival is held there, drawing as many as 1000 singers and an audience of about 100000, the greatest gathering of its kind in China.
There are different versions of how the festival was first started. But it is widely believed that its history can be traced back to the temple fair of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Then people were accustomed to worshipping the god of fire at a local temple. When traveling singers visited there, the local people would invite them to entertain as a kind of thanksgiving if they had reaped a good harvest or escaped a disaster.
The hospitality of the locals then attracted more ballad singers to the place, and some of them made such a hit that they were offered rich rewards.
To attend the festival in time, many singers set off shortly after the Spring Festival, especially those from neighbouring provinces or remote parts of the country.
When the festival opens, they put up their “stages” wherever possible — in the river valleys, on the hills, in the wheat fields or along the roadsides. The stages are set either face to face or back against back.
Taking up their instruments, the ballad singers keep performing for days, indeed a marvelous spectacle to behold.
The spontaneous meeting of so many people — the unsophisticated singing accompanied by simple and crude instruments; the attentive ears of old and young — all combine to produce a scene of time-honoured tradition, a real eye-opener to modern city-dwellers.
In recent years, many famous folk artists have attended the festival — among them storyteller Liu Lanfang from Liaoning, Zhu Qingtao (a Suzhou-dialect balladeer) from shanghai, and cross-talkers Jiang Kun and Tang Jiezhong from Beijing.
In 1988, a monument was erected as a memorial to the festival with an inscription by Wang Meng, the then Minister of Cultural Ministry.
Most of the performers are traveling singers, something like the Celtic bards or French troubadours in Medieval Europe. They are ready to settle down and perform wherever they can find an audience.
Nowadays, facing more difficulties establishing themselves in cities, such ballad singers find a ready audience in rural areas. So the festival has become an ideal place for them to fully display their talents.
If their presentation is appreciated, they will be invited to the villages nearby and paid to entertain the locals.
The festival has thus become a necessary prelude to a singer’s career.
For some singers, however, the festival is also a meeting place where they can see their masters or fellow singers. Two veteran sister-singers, one living in Wuhan and the other in Zhumadian, met each other once a year at the festival for more than four decades.
Many singers even regard it as a holy place, believing that if they make their pilgrimage there they will have boundless prospects. Young singers (the youngest last year was six years old) go there simply to broaden their mind and learn something from their elders. Whatever their motives, all of them will bring their skill into play, and the one who attracts most listeners will be voted the festival’s top balladeer, an honour every vocalist aspires to.
During the festival, the local hosts are busy shuttling back and forth in the crowd to choose their favourite performers. Usually the hosts are either a representative of a village or an administrative unit within a circumference of about 50 kilometres.
On the last day of the festival, after picking out his artist, the host will contact the performer.
They will strike a bargain by using a kind of secret gesture language, just like a method used in cattle dealings in traditional fairs. Prices vary with the year’s harvest and the singers’ artistic level. Price agreed upon, the host will leave an address for his man and take away his musical instruments. Then the singer will go with the host.
Sometimes, the host is kind enough to prepare a tractor or a horse-pulled cart for the singer if the place is far away. The singer usually performs for three days. A popular singer is likely to be button-holed for another three days’ performance and his payment will double accordingly.
The local people treat the singers as members of their own family. They gladly vacate their own rooms to put up the singers and prepare meals for them free of charge.
In return, the singers will entertain their landlords by their performance. Some frequenters have established a kinship with their landlord and visit each other on festive occasions.
Another interesting practice is the invitation of two rival singers by one man. The two will perform simultaneously in separate places, and the one who attracts the larger audience will be the winner, who will take the lion’s share of the total reward.
On the other side of the picture, however, is the disappointment of those neglected by the hosts, either for their featureless performances or impractical charges.
Yet on their way back home after the festival, if they stop in a village, they will receive an equally warm reception, though payment is not so high. The ballad-singing loving locals are so tender to the singers that they will never slam the door in a performer’s face.
Most of the stories told by the singers are age-old romances or legends, often permeated with feudalist morality, and occasionally touched with obscene description, a feature not uncommon in some other forms of Chinese folk art.
Many singers have had little schooling; some of them are even illiterate. Yet their devotion to art and sincerity to the audience leave little to be desired. It is they who have preserved this traditional art and, in spite of intense competition from so many modern forms of entertainment, have rooted it deeply in Chinese soil.
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