Grove Music Online China, People’s Republic of (Chin. Zhonghua renmin gonghe guo) Alan R. Thrasher, Joseph S.C. Lam, Jonathan P.J. Stock, Colin Mackerras, Francesca Rebollo-Sborgi, Frank Kouwenhoven, A. Schimmelpenninck, Stephen Jones, Han Mei, Wu Ben, Helen Rees, Sabine Trebinjac and Joanna C. Lee https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.43141 Published in print: 20 January 2001 Published online: 2001 updated, 31 January 2014 Country in East Asia. China is composed of 22 contiguous provinces, five autonomous regions originally inhabited largely by ‘minority’ groups (Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang-Uighur, Guangxi-Zhuang, Ningxia- Hui and Tibet), three centrally-controlled municipalities (the capital Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin) and the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau. Its total area of about 9,573,000 km² also includes the area formerly called Manchuria (now the three north- eastern provinces). According to the 2010 census the total population was 1.37 billion, with 55 minority nationalities, ethnically distinct from the Han Chinese majority, comprising 8.49%. The majority of the 23.2 million people (2012) of the Republic of China on the island of Taiwan originate from Fujian and eastern Guangdong provinces of mainland China; about 2.5 million came from other parts of mainland China with the Nationalists in 1949. The number of Chinese living outside China (including Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau) in 2012 was approximately 50 million. The largest groups of Chinese include about 32.7 million in South-east Asia (the biggest populations being in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore), 3.8 million in the USA and 1.3 million in Canada. The music of these groups is discussed, as far as possible, in the articles on the countries in which they went to live. See also Central Asia, §1; East Asia; Mongol music; Tibetan music. Page 1 of 157 PRINTED FROM Oxford Music Online. © Oxford University Press, 2019. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single article in Oxford Music Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy). I. Introduction: historical, regional and study perspectives Alan R. ThrasherAlan R. Thrasher Chinese music, owing to its depth of historical development and breadth of regional diversity, constitutes an uneasy alliance of many traditions. Some traditions, such as court ritual music and qin zither, maintain observable lines of continuity between ancient periods and the present; in others, such as the common-practice vocal and instrumental genres, their histories are more recent, and regional differences among similar types often quite pronounced. Thus a balanced view of traditions called ‘Chinese’ must be based not only on a knowledge of written history and related iconography but also on the distinctive cultural patterns and musical tastes of the various regions. 1. Han Chinese regions and genres. China today occupies a vast land mass extending from the Mongolian steppe southwards to the borders of present-day Vietnam and Myanmar (Burma), and from the East China Sea westwards to the borders of India and Afghanistan. The ancient centre of Chinese civilization, however, was a very much smaller area on the ‘Central Plain’ of north China (present-day Henan, Hebei, Shanxi and Shandong provinces). Following the emergence of a number of contending kingdoms such as Qin, Wei and Chu, Qin ascended to power in the 3rd century BCE, expanding its influence to the South China Sea and unifying the political system throughout its newly acquired empire. Further expansion in these and other directions occurred during the Han dynasty (206BCE–220CE), bringing with it the dissemination of many cultural elements, such as the written language and Confucian philosophy and its rituals. As a result, most Chinese today refer to themselves as ‘Han people’ in acknowledgement of this consolidation. The notion of a monolithic Chinese culture has penetrated deeply into popular thinking, both Chinese and Western. But unification touched the many regions of China unevenly, and over the last 2000 years, diverse regional subcultures, dialects and musical traditions have grown and thrived. These subcultures have gravitated for the most part towards the drainage areas of the Huanghe (‘Yellow river’) in north China, the lower Yangzi (Yangtze) river in central-eastern China, and the Zhujiang (‘Pearl river’) delta in south China. Their various musical traditions commonly share some structural similarities, although they are valued by local practitioners for their distinctive regional qualities. Among the many non-Han peoples, Page 2 of 157 PRINTED FROM Oxford Music Online. © Oxford University Press, 2019. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single article in Oxford Music Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy). ethnic minorities who have been pushed into the mountains, deserts and other less desirable space, the more usual response to Han unification has been resistance and often bloody rebellion. Their various musical traditions share few roots with the ‘great tradition’ of the Han. The Han Chinese comprise roughly 94% of the population of China. While the common-practice traditions retain close associations with specific regions, several Han music genres have achieved national prominence over the centuries, such as the Confucian ritual music of the court, the traditions of qin zither, Kunqu opera and Beijing opera, and other genres supported by the emperor or Han Chinese literati. Since the mid-20th century, the concert-hall tradition of ‘national music’ (guoyue) has also achieved a particularly strong pan-Chinese presence and is often the only tradition known among young conservatory-trained musicians of recent decades. Popular Chinese thinking divides Han China into two broad geographic regions: the North, with its lively traditions of Beijing opera and wind-and-percussion music, and the South, with its more refined literary traditions of Kunqu opera and silk-and-bamboo music. Qiao Jianzhong, approaching this question from a more empirical orientation, divides the country into as many as 12 music culture areas, based upon historic regional nomenclature and distinctive performance characteristics. The divisions given below, which largely coincide with his music areas, are based on geographic and socio-linguistic factors, resulting in what some sinologists call ‘macroregions’. (i) Central Plain. Bordering the Yellow river as it flows through and often over the floodplain of northern Henan and western Shandong provinces is the region known as the Central Plain (Zhongyuan). This broad area is the acknowledged birthplace of Han Chinese civilization and subsequent location of political centres (especially at Luoyang and Anyang) from the Shang through Tang periods (c16th century BCE to 10th century CE). The northern province of Hebei, together with the cities of Beijing and Tianjin, may also be included in this macroregion, though cultural development here occurred later. Artefacts of musical significance unearthed on the Central Plain include bone and clay flutes dating to between 6000 and 5000 BCE, together with later finds of Shang bronze bells and stone chimes. Oracle bones dating from between the 14th and 12th centuries BCE, on which are inscribed many references to musical instruments, ceremony and dance, were also found in this region. Much later, imperial ceremonies such as Confucian rituals, with their magnificent instrumental ensembles were established in the Shandong city of Qufu (legendary home of Confucius), in Beijing and in other urban centres. Page 3 of 157 PRINTED FROM Oxford Music Online. © Oxford University Press, 2019. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single article in Oxford Music Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy). Instrumental ensembles in common practice today are mostly of the wind-and-percussion variety, notably the processional suona-and- percussion bands and the ritually more significant ensembles utilizing guan (reed pipe), sheng (mouth organ), di (flute), yunluo (frame of pitched gongs) and percussion. Both types are common throughout northern China, the latter currently most famed in central Hebei province. The most significant instrumental solo tradition to emerge on the Central Plain is the ‘northern school’ of zheng zither, centred in eastern Henan and south-western Shandong. Beijing opera and the other opera traditions of this are more recent in origin and related to those opera types of the north- west and other areas of central China. Narrative song is represented by varieties of dagu (‘large drum’, accompanied by large sanxian and drum), as well as Henan zhuizi and Shandong qinshu, which are unique to their areas. Folksong genres include shan′ge (‘mountain songs’) and the call-and-response type tiange (‘field songs’) of Henan, and the colourful Fengyang huagu (‘flower drum’) songs, which originated in Anhui province and spread into Shandong and other areas. The music culture of the Central Plain exerted considerable influence on surrounding regions, most immediately in the north-west and central interior. (ii) The north-west and central interior. The north-west (Xibei), centred on present-day Shaanxi and western Shanxi provinces and extending into the more western provinces of Gansu and Ningxia, is a highland plateau surrounding the upper reaches of the Yellow river. This region, centre of political activity during the Western Zhou dynasty (c11th–8th centuries BCE), saw the rise of the 3rd-century BCE state of Qin, whose founder, Qin Shihuang, boldly declared himself the first emperor of China and instigated massive and effective measures of political unification. His capital was established near the city of Xi′an, an area that retained its importance for the next millennium. Present-day wind-and- percussion music, such as the ceremonial guyue (‘drum music’) of the Xi′an area and other variants, have been thought to retain some Tang (618–907CE) characteristics, though they have naturally undergone subsequent change.