A DRUM TALE ON “WU SONG FIGHTS THE TIGER” Vibeke Børdahl (Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Copenhagen) For Kate This essay is written in honor of Kate Stevens, who opened the door to Chinese storytelling for me. The occasion was a performance of Beijing drum singing (Jingyun dagu 京韻大鼓) at the Shaoyuan dormitory of Peking University in 1984, arranged by Kate for friends and colleagues and people around (such as myself, a student at Shaoyuan). This was not only my first experience of drum singing, but of Chinese “tell and sing” (shuochang 說唱) arts, as such. Later, when I had occasion to meet Kate Stevens again in 1989 in China and in 1999 in her home in Victoria, Canada, she generously shared her scholarship and friendship, for which I am deeply indebted to her. In the following we shall take a close look at a drum tale entitled Jingyanggang Wu Song da hu 景陽崗 武松打虎 [Wu Song Fights the Tiger on Jingyang Ridge] and try out the analytic approach used for the core texts of my larger project, a study of “Wu Song Fights the Tiger” in Chinese storytelling.1 I regard the storyteller’s art, not as 1 I gratefully acknowledge the assistance offered by Yu Jing 喻京, Feng Yining 馮一 宁, and Huang Ying 黃瑛 in transcribing and drafting translations for the project “Wu Song Fights the Tiger in Chinese Storytelling.” The texts listed in the Appendix appear as scanned originals, along with character transcriptions and English translations, on the website www.shuoshu.org; this material forms part of the Database on Chinese Storytelling, created in collaboration with Jens Chr. Sørensen. I wish to thank Kirsten Thisted for inspiring conversations on ‘orality and literacy’ CHINOPERL Papers No. 27 (2007) ©2007 by the Conference on Chinese Oral and Performed Literature, Inc. CHINOPERL Papers No. 27 essentially ‘derived’ from the novel Shuihu zhuan 水滸傳 [Water Margin],2 but as a parallel tradition, which was already well developed at the time when the novel took form.3 In a society where the themes and heroes of Water Margin were living in popular culture, the individual tales were transmitted in a wealth of oral genres, some of which were also sooner or later written down. The constituents of a tale like the tiger story would be assembled by the storytellers from their orally inherited art (from their master), but also augmented with details invented or learned from other oral as well as written genres that were current in their own time. In the Wu Song project the main focus is on the linguistic form of the tale, in written, semi-oral and oral sources, old and new. My aim is to show the intertextual relation between a number of “instances” of the tale, both as words of performance (oral texts)4 and as words of written texts. Thus my project considers a broad synchronic and diachronic framework, encompassing oral performances on tape, CD and videos, as well as written texts, including novels and dramatic versions—a collection that will never cease expanding. during our stay at the San Cataldo institute in Italy, November 2004, where this study took shape. I am also grateful to Kathy Lowry and Margaret Wan for their comments. The Norwegian Research Council Program for Cultural Studies has given funding to the project. 2 For this approach, see for example Chen Wulou (1990: 32–33). Duan Baolin documents the complexity of oral and written sources for the Wang School of Yangzhou storytelling and demonstrates the idea of Shuihu zhuan as a turning point for the development (1990: 72–75, 86). 3 See the account by the Ming author Zhang Dai, “Liu Jingting shuoshu” 柳敬亭說 書 [The storyteller Liu Jingting], in Tao’an mengyi (1986: 68). Translation in Børdahl (1996: 13). 4 The word “text” does not, in the present usage, imply writing, unless otherwise specified. So we shall speak of both oral and written texts. Oral texts of the present study are available in electronic media. 2 Børdahl, A Drum Tale on “Wu Song” Focusing on the drum tale in the framework of this project, implies a double aim: 1) to bring out the special linguistic and narrative form of the drum tale as an instance of the ‘Wu Song and tiger’ tale; 2) to bring out the contrastive linguistic and narrative patterns that become apparent by comparison with other “instances” representing the three main genres where this tale is found: novel, drama and performed arts.5 The overall aim of the project, including this particular study of the drum tale, is to explore the interplay of oral and written culture in China. The drum tale text Storytelling with drum accompaniment belongs within the umbrella genre of Chinese shuochang wenxue 說唱文學 [tell-and-sing litera- ture]. The text under study is not a performance, but a written text, a small booklet from the collection of su wenxue 俗文學 [popular literature] dating to the Late Qing and Early Republican era, in the 5 Ten instances from the core material are selected to form the framework of the present analysis, namely two versions of the Ming novel, two dramatic versions (Ming and Qing), four performance texts (Qing, Early Republic and People’s Republic) and two oral performances from recent years. See the Appendix. 3 CHINOPERL Papers No. 27 Figure 1. Drum tale A , cover page, 13 x 9,5 cm. Original in the Academia Sinica Collection. Academia Sinica Collection (hereafter ASC) held at the Fu Ssu-nien Library, Institute of History and Philology in Nangang, Taiwan.6 In this collection, under the main entry of shuoshu 說書 [storytelling], one finds eleven subcategories, among which five seem closely related and all share the drum for rhythmic accompaniment. These are the guci 鼓 詞 [drum tale], dagu 大鼓 [big drum], kuaishu 快書 [fast tale], zidishu 子弟書 [Manchu gentry tales] and Shipai shu 石派書 [Shi- style drum tale].7 The item we are concerned with carries the title 6 For an introduction to the ASC collection, see Stevens (1973: 24, 251n14); Børdahl (1999). 7 Cf. Stevens (1973: 273). Please, note that kuaishu and Shandong kuaishu are separate genres. The forms of zidishu and kuaishu are closely related; Cf. Chen 4 Børdahl, A Drum Tale on “Wu Song” Jingyanggang Wu Song da hu [Wu Song Fights the Tiger on Jingyang Ridge] as well as the printer’s name Baowentang 寶文堂 in big characters on the cover page. It is classified as dagushu 大鼓書 [big drum tale] in the ASC. During my research stay at the library in 1998 I located one edition in the rare book room and another with the title Wu Song da hu [Wu Song Fights the Tiger] among the library’s microfilm holdings. The present paper focuses on the ASC woodblock edition, which I call Drum tale A in what follows. The microfilm version, or Drum tale B, is very similar, though not identical with text A.8 The text Jinzhao (1982). 8 Drum tale A has an inscription on the cover: Ku I 9-175, keben 刻本 [woodblock print], dagu 大鼓 [big drum]. It contains 8 pages, 18 couplets pr page (a + b), 143 couplets (only 17 couplets on the final page). I base my study on a scanned copy of the ASC original. Drum tale A is almost identical to Drum tale B in the ASC microfilms, MF 1854 NF 254. In the first line Drum tale A reads sheng wang 聖王 [sage ruler], while Drum tale B reads Song wang 宋王 [the Song ruler]. However, the woodblocks for B use simplified and variant forms of Chinese characters, or su zi 俗字 [non-standard character forms] and contain some extra lines. The cover page reads: Xin ke xiao duan Wu Song da hu, Tang zi 新刻小段武松打虎﹐堂梓 [Newly cut small section on Wu Song Fights the Tiger, Shop? edition]. It has 13 pages, with 12 couplets per page (a + b), a total of 153 couplets. In the early catalogue of the collection, Liu Fu and Li Jiarui ([1932] 1993, Vol I: 493), there is an entry under the title: Wu Song da hu [Wu Song Fights the Tiger], indicating place: Beiping [Beijing], format: mu 木 [wood(block)], 13 pages, with no printing shop mentioned. According to the page number, title and (lack of) printing shop, item B corresponds to the catalogue entry. The first two lines for this item are rewritten in the catalogue and are identical with version B, with only one deviation, that is, the name Tong Guan written with the characters 童貫, where both of the woodblock editions have 佟確. Versions A and B follow each other closely, with only small deviations (different forms of many characters, occasionally a different word, a few extra lines in version B). In this paper I comment only on differences that are relevant to the discussion. In the quoted examples the standard fanti forms are used. Transcriptions according to the original character forms will be available on the database, cf. note 1. 5 CHINOPERL Papers No. 27 of both editions contains only the words of the story and is devoid of any external information, such as genre name, tags for spoken portions versus sung portions, name of melodies or rhythmic patterns, etc. which are often found in performance texts, but not in the A or B texts.9 Drum tale B almost certainly belongs among the vernacular texts that Li Jiarui and Liu Fu collected in China 1917–1928, included in the first catalogue of vernacular literature that they published in 1932 (reprint 1993). Thus the latest possible date this item might have been printed is 1928.